While I occasionally see it on here, in the Locker Room from a handful of posters, I have noticed an increase in the number of Black people who claim that: 1) they are not descendants of enslaved African peoples, or are "indigenous" to the region; 2) that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade outright did not occur or; 3) a combination of the first two beliefs sitting alongside the idea of them being "Israelites" - presumably referring to "Hebrew Israelites."
I assume that it has a handful of various origins: 1) bad interpretations of the doctrines of the Moorish Science Temple and break-off sects of the Nation of Islam; 2) genuinely bad education, where a lot of Black kids never had a proper engagement with the history of the New World, chattel slavery, and the modern world system; 3) internalized anti-Blackness, where they believe they can't be of African descent, and instead that they must be descended from some mysterious Indians, 4) sloppy family history where they were told that they have some indigenous ancestry (almost always without a scintilla of evidence) or 5) engagement with works like Ivan Van Sertima's popular and influential pseudo-history: They Came Before Columbus.
I think it is worthwhile to compile a list of important and accessible works to push back on this pseudo-history masquerading as an alternative history:
Some of my personal favorites are:
1. Gerald Horne - The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century;
2. Stephanie Smallwood - Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora;
3. John Henrik Clarke - Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism;
4. Judith A. Carney - Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas;
5. Robin Blackburn - The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern 1492-1800;
6. W.E.B. DuBois - Black Reconstruction in America;
7. C.L.R. James - The Black Jacobins;
8. Ira Berlin - Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America;
9. Daniel A. Novak - The Wheel of Servitude: Black Forced Labor After Slavery;
10. Sally E. Hadden - Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas;
11. Annettee Gordon Reed - The Hemingses of Monticello;
12. Joseph E. Inikori - Africans and the Industrial Trade and Economic Development;
13. Eric Williams - Capitalism and Slavery
But when it comes to denial of what is otherwise a universally recognized period of history that was embedded in virtually every part of global commerce - its a bit tougher to convince someone who is already denying.
Any brehs had any success on this?
I assume that it has a handful of various origins: 1) bad interpretations of the doctrines of the Moorish Science Temple and break-off sects of the Nation of Islam; 2) genuinely bad education, where a lot of Black kids never had a proper engagement with the history of the New World, chattel slavery, and the modern world system; 3) internalized anti-Blackness, where they believe they can't be of African descent, and instead that they must be descended from some mysterious Indians, 4) sloppy family history where they were told that they have some indigenous ancestry (almost always without a scintilla of evidence) or 5) engagement with works like Ivan Van Sertima's popular and influential pseudo-history: They Came Before Columbus.
I think it is worthwhile to compile a list of important and accessible works to push back on this pseudo-history masquerading as an alternative history:
Some of my personal favorites are:
1. Gerald Horne - The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century;
2. Stephanie Smallwood - Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora;
3. John Henrik Clarke - Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism;
4. Judith A. Carney - Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas;
5. Robin Blackburn - The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern 1492-1800;
6. W.E.B. DuBois - Black Reconstruction in America;
7. C.L.R. James - The Black Jacobins;
8. Ira Berlin - Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America;
9. Daniel A. Novak - The Wheel of Servitude: Black Forced Labor After Slavery;
10. Sally E. Hadden - Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas;
11. Annettee Gordon Reed - The Hemingses of Monticello;
12. Joseph E. Inikori - Africans and the Industrial Trade and Economic Development;
13. Eric Williams - Capitalism and Slavery
But when it comes to denial of what is otherwise a universally recognized period of history that was embedded in virtually every part of global commerce - its a bit tougher to convince someone who is already denying.
Any brehs had any success on this?
