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Books by Wilson
Jeremiah Moses
Golden Age of Black Nationalism,
1850-1925 (1988) /
The Wings of Ethiopia
(1990)
Alexander
Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent
(1992) /
Destiny & Race: Selected Writings, 1840-1898
(1992)
Black
Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary
Manipulations of a Religious Myth (1993)
Liberian Dreams: Back-to-Africa
Narratives from the 1850s
/
Afrotopia: The Roots of African American
Popular History
(2002)
Creative Conflict in African American Thought (2004)
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Republicans' Brilliant Cynical Coup
By
Wilson J. Moses
I have been eating
crow this week, realizing that Phil Gramm, with
a little help from George Bush II, has been
proven correct. Gramm said, in effect, that
current economic problems are purely
psychological, reiterating the old economic
truism "We have nothing to fear but fear
itself." Then Bush by revoking his father's
executive ban on offshore drilling heartened
Wall Street and the psychological effect was
wonderful.
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Behold!
oh ye vacant-eyed slack-jawed
Americans. Stand still and be
stupefied! The Dow has gained over
500 points in three days; the price
of oil has dropped by $18 a barrel.
Gas at the pump has theoretically
dropped to $3.00 in some places.
Now we can all go out and buy some
more SUVs. I am so happy, for just
this morning I got an offer for a 13
month CD at 4.1% from a local
wild cat bank. There was even a
picture of a wild cat (a cute little
Nittany lion cub) on the
advertisement! But read on. . . .
And
rejoice! You will now have the
opportunity to buy some of Fannie
Mae's newly watered stock! Assuming
you have any loose cash to invest. |
In the only place
that matters, i.e., the stock market, the Bush/Gramm
economic surge is working, at least so far.
Never mind that people's houses are still being
foreclosed, and meanwhile, if you can't heat
your house this winter, blame those feckless
Democrats and that silly unpatriotic
environmentalist, Al Gore. Isn't the fact that
he won a Nobel Prize proof enough that he is
unpatriotic, anyway? So there!
And meanwhile in Iraq "the surge has worked."
Only 39 American deaths in the past forty days!
And less than 150 maimed! As for the
psychologically damaged, General Patton showed
us how to deal with them.
Can we blame Obama for moving to the right? His
shift is as predictable, as it is inevitable,
and represents the essential feature of
"representative" government. The President
must be the "representative" of all the people.
Senator Obama is obliged to represent everyone,
not only the pacifistic Unitarians, who vote for
him, but the gun-toting bible thumpers of
western Pennsylvania, as well. The President is
obliged to represent hawks as well as doves,
pro-lifers, as well as pro-choicers,
inflationists as well as deflationists. Bullish
oil speculators as well as bearish short
sellers. Bankers, as well as those whose houses
are being foreclosed.
Under close
analysis, the word "Representation" means
nothing! It can mean nothing!
The Constitution does not make any provisions
for the representation of your rights, your
liberties, your values, your interests or your
opinions. It simply gives you
"representatives" who provide a symbolic
representation, very similar to the "virtual
representation," enjoyed by the colonies under
British rule in 1776.
That is the little boll weevil ("weasel," the
lady said, "weasel") in the "republican form
of government" that your high school civics book
taught you to revere. The Constitution of the
United States makes provisions for representing
"the people," but not necessarily for
representing their political opinions or
interests. This republic was never intended to
offer anything but "symbolic representation."
Thus, even the slaves were "represented" in the
3/5 compromise, over protests of other
interested parties, including abolitionists, who
protested giving 100% representation to the
drivers of slaves. The compromise generously
provided that slaves would be at least partially
represented—by the very men who denied their
basic human rights and liberties.
Of course the underlying cynicism was that
wealthy slaveholders were not interested in
representing the rights, values, or interests of
anyone—certainly not the rights of poor white
dirt-farmers, hired girls, or indentured
servants. In medieval Europe, the great lords
symbolically represented their peasants, whom
they raped and tortured at will. The priests
represented their flocks, whose minds they
filled with sophistries and superstition.
Your elected
representatives cynically remind you that they
are not obliged to read the opinion polls, and
they are correct. They have no obligation to
represent the opinions of anyone.
Some people are so foolish as to think their
"elected representatives" should abide by their
promises. I say, we should pray they will break
their promises. Stalin and Mao were
consistent. Once they launched a
five-year-plan, they stayed the course,
regardless of how many millions starved. "Read
my lips," said George Bush, "No new taxes," but
he had the strength to change his mind, thus
disappointing his backers, losing the election,
and unintentionally laying the foundation for
Bill Clinton's balanced budget.
posted 19 July 2008
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Speak My Name
Black Men on Masculinity and the
American Dream
Edited by Don
Belton
Race Men
By Hazel V.
Carby
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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