Title: An African American and Latinx History of the United States
Author: Paul Ortiz
Genre: History
Trigger Warnings: Slavery, racism, colorism, systemic oppression, racial slurs, colonialism, imperialism
Back Cover:
Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged revisionist history, arguing that Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa–otherwise known as “The Global South”–were crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, as exalted by widely-taught formulations like “Manifest Destiny” and “Jacksonian Democracy,” and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into one of the working class organizing themselves against imperialism.
In precise detail, Ortiz traces this untold history from the Jim Crow-esque racial segregation of the Southwest, the rise and violent fall of a powerful tradition of Mexican labor organizing in the 20th century, to May 1, 2006, International Workers’ Day, when migrant laborers–Chicana/os, Afrocubanos, and immigrants from every continent on earth–united in the first “Day Without Immigrants” to prove the value of their labor.
Incisive and timely, An African American and Latinx History is a bottom-up history told from the viewpoint of African American and Latinx activists revealing the radically different ways that brown and black people of the diaspora addressed issues plaguing the United States today.
Review:
When I picked up this book, I wondered why African American history and Latinx history were lumped together. Why didn’t each get its own book? But after reading a little bit, I understand. African American history and Latinx history in the United States are deeply intertwined, more than I would have expected or guessed.
I really appreciated that this book did not cover in depth the history everybody knows. It goes from the arrival of the first imported Africans in the American colonies nearly to present day, covering laws and events relevant to African American and Latinx communities, how they felt about them, and how they reacted, and very few things in these pages are things I already knew. Abraham Lincoln was mentioned twice and the Emancipation Proclamation only once; Martin Luther King Jr. was discussed only in the context of labor rights and unionization. This is not the same old stuff you covered in history class – this is history you don’t get taught in your ordinary history curriculum. Some of these events I was alive for and still had no idea about.
My only issue with this book was that it throws around terms without actually defining them. I figured out “racial capitalism” from nomenclature and context, but I’m still not entirely sure what “emancipatory internationalism” is. I wish there was an appendix of definitions at the back (although I read the audiobook, so there may very well be definitions in the print version).
This is a very worthwhile book. It taught me history that I never learned, illustrated racism, classism, and colonialism with real historical examples, and gave me perspectives on the United States that I don’t often hear. It’s a little drier than I usually like to read, but it’s worth reading anyway.