The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks
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Overview
The national bestseller by the author of Defending the Spirit.
In this powerful and controversial book, distinguished African-American political leader and thinker Randall Robinson argues for the restoration of the rich history that slavery and segregation severed. Drawing from research and personal experience, he shows that only by reclaiming their lost past and proud heritage can blacks lay the foundation for their future. And white Americans can make reparations for slavery and the century of racial discrimination that followed with monetary restitution, educational programs, and the kinds of equal opportunities that will ensure the social and economic success of all its citizens.
In a book that is both an unflinching indictment of past wrongs and an impassioned call to our nation to educate all Americans about the history of Africa and its people, Robinson makes a persuasive case for the debt white America owes blacks, and the debt blacks owe themselves.
Synopsis
In Randall Robinson's view, racial problems can't be solved until America is willing to face up to the devastating effects of slavery and educate all Americans, black and white, about the history of Africa and its people.
In his recent book, the highly successful Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America, Robinson makes a stirring call to form the next legion of African-American leadership. Now, in The Debt, he argues that reclaiming the lost history of Africa and African-Americans will help provide a much-needed springboard for solving many of today's problems-from finding new leadership within the black community to developing meaningful educational programs to helping black people empower themselves economically. Robinson also argues that the United States must be prepared to make restitution to African-Americans for 246 years of slavery, and the century of de jure racial discrimination that followed, via major educational programs and economic development. Robinson offers a solution-oriented approach to controversial issues of social justice in a style that is both personal and informative.
Washington Post Book World - Frank H. Wu
Robinson is respected for having brought the political influence of the black diaspora to bear on U.S. foreign policy toward Africa. He has met another challenge here: His book is easy to read....His style...is engaging and conveys his estrangement from the mainstream.....He continues an important conversation. Democratic deliberation helps create a society in which we are all equal stakeholders. The process is as valuable as the outcome. In that context, even if reparations are a lost cause, they are a noble cause.
Editorials
Frank H. Wu
Robinson is respected for having brought the political influence of the black diaspora to bear on U.S. foreign policy toward Africa. He has met another challenge here: His book is easy to read....His style...is engaging and conveys his estrangement from the mainstream.....He continues an important conversation. Democratic deliberation helps create a society in which we are all equal stakeholders. The process is as valuable as the outcome. In that context, even if reparations are a lost cause, they are a noble cause.— Washington Post Book World
Publishers Weekly -
As founder and president of TransAfrica, an organization aimed at influencing U.S. policies toward Africa and the Caribbean, Robinson can be said to have contributed to the antiapartheid movement and the restoration of democracy in Haiti. Having vividly outlined the pervasiveness of American racism in his previous work, Defending the Spirit, he now summons America to acknowledge what he casts as its financial obligation to blacks for centuries of slavery and continued subjugation. Substantiating his analysis of America's ignorance of African history and the agenda of the Clinton administration with personal stories that illustrate the impact of de facto discrimination, he reveals slavery's legacy not only in our social and political lives, but also in the American psyche. In Robinson's view, the incessant deification of the founding fathers (many of whom owned slaves) and the denial of the benefits gained from centuries of slave labor are, in effect, an attempt to pretend "that America's racial holocaust never occurred." Juxtaposing domestic racism with the sufferings of people abroad, he contends that America's dubious foreign policy initiatives in Cuba and throughout the black world should be mitigated through debt relief. Methodically tackling one issue at a time, Robinson suggests the creation of a trust to assist in the educational and economic empowerment of African-Americans. Whether readers agree or disagree with his views, Robinson has made a definitive step in presenting these controversial and still unresolved issues. Book club rights sold to Doubleday/Black Expressions; author tour. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.KLIATT
"The problem of the twentieth-century," wrote W.E.B. DuBois in 1903, will be "the problem of the color line." At the close of that century, Randall Robinson, another eminent African American scholar/activist, suggests that the problem of the 21st century should be the problem of reparations to African Americans. Robinson, who went to segregated schools in the South before graduating from Harvard Law School, is the founder and president of TransAfrica, and was the single most influential person in organizing the movement that led the U.S. to impose economic sanctions on South Africa, resulting in the dismantling of apartheid. In The Debt, Robinson looks at the devastating consequences at home of centuries of slavery, segregation, and the refusal to acknowledge these wrongs. Reparations were paid to the Jews and Poles after the Holocaust, to the Japanese Americans after their internment during WW II, to Korean women forced into prostitution by Japan, to the Inuit in Canada and to the Aborigines in Australia, and they are due to the 32 million African Americans who continue to suffer from four centuries of institutional exploitation and disenfranchisement. Such reparations will finally remedy the psychological harm done to African Americans whose contributions to this country remain unacknowledged, and will lift them from the financial abyss they find themselves in today, as a result of multi-layered discrimination. Despite its title, which might suggest economic jargon, The Debt: What America Owes Blacks is highly readable, replete with pertinent anecdotes and accessible, convincing examples. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, andadults. 2000, Plume, 262p, bibliog, index, 21cm, 99-045728, $13.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Nada Elia, Visiting Assoc. Prof.; Afro-American Studies, Brown University, Providence, RI, March 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 2)Library Journal
The title of this book shouldn't deter perspective readers: Robinson (founder and president of TransAfrica) dedicates only one of the ten chapters to a discussion of reparations. And his ideas about reparations are unconventional: it's true, he writes, that there is a precedent for paying reparations to the victims of history. But even just starting a national conversation about reparations, he suggests, would be useful--such a discussion would bring U.S. racial atrocities to the surface, make blacks aware that something has been taken from them through no fault of their own, and launch a critical mass of blacks "into a surge of black self-discovery." In the remainder of the book Robinson discusses his disappointment with the quantity and quality of black political participation and the long-term economic and psychic damage brought on by slavery, Jim Crow, blacks' lost African past, and unequal U.S. foreign and domestic policies. Robinson's political experience and readable prose should make the book appealing to a wide audience. For public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/99.].--Sherri Barnes, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.Cornell West
Randall Robinson's powerful and poignant story of personal and political struggle is one of vision, courage, and sacrifice.—Cornell West, Harvard University