Slavery by Another Name

Short Review: There is no way to really give a short review of Slavery By Another Name. I have been aware of the book for a while and knew the basic idea of the book before I started it. That did not really prepare me for how wide spread the practice of slavery was in the post-civil war era. It was not the same as pre-civil war slavery. But it was still slavery and in some ways it was just as brutal as the pre-civil war slavery. In others ways it was even more problematic because the veneer of freedom existed. The numbers of slaves were relatively low compared to the population of African Americans in the South. But the practice was used not only for cheap labor but as a means of oppressing those that were not physically being held as slaves.

Books like this I want to give to anyone that denies the impact today of segregation or racism. The PRRI polls released this week about discrimination among young adults ( https://www.prri.org/research/mtv-culture-and-religion/ ) show that many Whites, especially White males continue to deny that discrimination has any impact today, and at the same time suggest that it is they that are the ones being discriminated against. Part of that is sheer ignorance. And it can be corrected with books like this. But part is deeper ingrained. At some point I hope we as a culture will adequately come to understand the implications of our past racism, belief in White Supremacy and the legal (and illegal) acts of oppression. But even for someone like me that has been actively searching out understanding, there is so much racist attitudes and ignorance that needs to be rooted out.

The final section of this book is directly about how we can process this era of history and I am glad it was included.

My full (nearly 2000 word) review and description of Slavery by Another Name is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/slavery-by-another-name/