African Americans & A New History of the USA

Description

The recent popularity of the ‘1619 Project,’ which posited that the origins of the USA reside not in 1776 but with the arrival on these shores of Africans destined for enslavement, suggests that a new vision of the history of African Americans is long overdue. First of all, the roots of this epochal arrival can be found well before 1619—and 1492 too.

With the publication of this book, we now have a new story that argues that the roots of racism can be found in a pre-existing era of murderous religious conflict—Christians v. Jewish; Christians v. Muslims—and, especially Protestant v. Catholic—underscoring the pernicious religiosity that undergirds anti-Blackness and white supremacy alike, meaning more innovative approaches are needed to subdue this pestilence.

Likewise, this book posits a contradiction between the class struggle that drove the unpaid sector of the working class—i.e. enslaved Africans—and the class collaboration that undergirded the settler colonialism that descended on North America and dispossessed the Indigenous and those of Mexican origin too. This has necessitated internationalism as a strategic objective for Black Liberation (and, indeed, working class advance), which reached a new stage with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and continues to this very day with the rise of China and Socialist Cuba.

This “New History” inevitably will give rise to new approaches in the struggle for a Socialist USA.