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Rating: 
Summary: Superb
Review: A must-read for anyone who wants to understand America's racial problems. This book provides the definitive refutation of the arguments put forth by the likes of Dinesh D'Souza, Larry Elder, and Thomas Sowell.
Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: A must-read for anyone who wants to understand America's racial problems. This book provides the definitive refutation of the arguments put forth by the likes of Dinesh D'Souza, Larry Elder, and Thomas Sowell.
Rating:
Summary: Cogent & comprehensive analysis of race and class in America
Review: How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America is an updated edition of Manning Marable's classic in black literature, and has received a new introduction and an update to the book's tables and charts to reflect the latest new data on Afro-American statistics. Marable's cogent and comprehensvie analysis of race and class in the United States down through the country's political and economic history to modern times continues to provide important food for though for a contemporary readership.
Rating: 
Summary: Toward a Communist America ???
Review: I don't know anyone would like to read this book unless they are Afrian Americans. In "How Capatalism Underdeveloped Black America," the author writes the only way to achieve economic, political and social development for Blacks is to overthrow Captalist system in United States. As the author said, since the country is dominated by racist, and sexist white Americans, a bloody revolution has to be acted. The first phase of the socialist revolution is voting for progressive and anticapitalist politicians. The second phase is creating a chaotic living condition in America so that government has to cooperate with revoluntists. After the success of the socialist reforms, and totally eliminated captalism in the nation. They are going to support other countries to achieve "equality", too. Our country is going to be working class based nation, with universal health care, volunteer military officers, and equal-paid wage.
Rating:
Summary: Long Live Socialism !!!!!!!!!!
Review: I read this book 1 year ago and has since then enhanced my knowledge of black society here in America. At the end of his book (Towards a Socialist America) Manning pulls all the punches and fortells that the only way blacks and quite possibly other oppressed ethnic groups can get out our situation is through working together and defeat the ruling elite that now has its foot on our backs !!!!!!!!!!! This book is a must read.
Rating:
Summary: How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America
Review: This at times slightly difficult to read book is very relevant even if the text of the book was published in 1983. Let me give you an idea of the discussion in the book below.
This January 2000 edition contains a new intro by the learned professor. He tries to correct in it a few observations and predictions he believes he got wrong in the original addition. He points out that spectacular growth of the prison-industrial complex since 1981 with an increase of the prison population from 500,000 in 1981 to almost 2 million today. He points out that as jobs with livable wages continue to disappear and with the stock market casino which drove the economy of the 90's getting wrecked, thousands more poor and even middle class whites along with blacks and other minorities will turn up in the prison system. One in five Americans, he writes, now has a criminal record. In any case, this book is about how Capitalism is black Americans greatest enemy. Racism is an integral part of American capitalism, he stresses. Blacks enslaved because of their race created the wealth which gave this country its economic foundations. Blacks in the South, imprisoned justly or unjustly, provided an ultra-cheap source of labor in the convict-work system under conditions not too far from Nazi concentration camps. He writes that in the 1880's, the mortality rate for blacks in prison in Mississippi was 11 percent. In Arkansas it was 25 percent. he notes that blacks and white workers combining their power could have made great gains. That they did not is perhaps he says why the standard of living has been so low in the South relative to the rest of the country. White workers apparently were more comfortably keeping blacks down to maintain their status in the white supremacist culture. One interesting thing the author notes about Southern whites is their widespread ownership of firearms. He quotes C. Vann Woodward as saying that Alabama Whites spent more combined on firearms than on farm equipment and tools combined. Firearms were a unique part of the Southern culture and whites carried them everywhere they went and never avoided a chance to use them. He gives interesting statistic that while the national homicide rate of 1926 was 10.1 per 1,000 in Jacksonville Florida it was 75.9, in Birmingham 58.8, Memphis 42.4, Nashville 29.2. He writes extensively about the idea of "black capitalism" empowering black progress. He spends alot of time writing about Booker T. Washington. Washington is portrayed as an opportunist politically with some bad ideas though he did give covert aid to civil rights activists while he was preaching accomodation with white supremacy in public. Marable says that the black so-caleld conservatives of today like Thomas Sowell are not even fit to carry his mantle. The latter are simply vulgar apologists and obfuscators of the racist/capitalist order. The problem with black capitalists, the author writes, is that they are capitalists. That means they have to maximize their short-term profit at whatever cost. The well being of the black race only being incidental. Moreover, he goes through laborious statistics showing that black capitalists have had their only substantial successes only when they had captive markets in all-black communities, segregated or otherwise and mostly in "human services" such as barbering and small retail stores. So the author shows that "black capitalism" which was a main platform for Marcus Garvey (who was influenced by Washington), and extended to Elijah Muhammed to the Nation of Islam of current times and was even supported by W.E.B. Dubois until the Great Depression--really does not work. He writes that the "crises" of capitalism which began in the 70's has hit hard black families the most, of course. Unemployment went down dramatically for blacks in the 60's, he points out because of the government implementing affirmative action to try to eliminate discrimination in employment, migration of blacks from the south to the north to get higher pay jobs and the expanding capitalist economy. The unemployment of nonwhites was 6.4 percent in 1969 and the unemployment for nonwhite married men fell to 2.5 that year from 7.9 in 1962. However nonwhite unemployment was 14 percent by 1975 and unemployment for married nonwhites was 8.3.
He notes that workers losing their jobs because their industries couldn't compete in the U.S. market with foreign producers were awarded substantial amounts of their former pay for 18 months. In December 1980 almost 250,000 workers were obtaining funds for this program but a year later only 12,000 were able to use it. In January 1982, only 37 percent of the unemployed were getting any form of compensation. The umemployment rate reached 17.4 percent for blacks in late 81' though this did not, as no unemployment figures do, include the workers who have stopped actively looking for work for four weeks or more. He notes the phenomenon of large numbers of workers unable to get employment during large parts of the year i.e. being underemployed and only getting part-time or temporary low wage work. Also he writes a little bit about the "lumpenproletariat"... Chapter 9 is called "The meaning of racist violence in late capitalism"...IT includes citation (see the endnote) of Daryl Gate's speculation about blood not flowing through the veins of blacks as fast as "normal people," the comment being made in response to several chokehold deaths at the hands of LAPD of minorities.
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