Wednesday 28 February 2024

Resources for Week Nine: A Divided America

                       Books

                                    






Created by Nikole Hannah Jones, who has assembled a wide assortment of historians, poets and fiction writers, The 1619 Project  is a controversial but thoughtful compendium that has shaped my own thinking in the development of these presentations. Anyone with a curious and open mind would benefit from reading essays such as on crime, medicine, music and justice to name only a few.


The Atlantic writer Adam Serwer has collected a series of essays that focus on the Trump era and reveals insightful connections from the past, the Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. For example, he shows that Trump's incitments of violence at his rallies is not something new but resembles the photographs of whites enjoying the lynchings of Black people. 

                                     Article


Adam Hochshild, " History Bright and Dark," New York Review of Books, May 25, 2023. This is the cover that prefaces Hochshild's excellent review of how history can be taught, which explores the dark historical corridors of America, and from a more conservative perspective that highlights American exceptionalism while ignoring or minimizing its uglier features.


                                   Fiction and Film          




Rarely does a film based on a book excel the resource source but I think the film is exceptional. It is about a teenage girl who tries to keep her homelife in a Black community separate from her school life which is largely white private school. A tragic event makes that no longer possible as her two worlds collide. A powerful film about the difficulties that Blacks face with the police that whites are impervious about.

The following presents the title of a disturbing article and link to that article. 

Student 'slave auctions' illustrate the existence of a hidden culture of domination and subjugation in US schools

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