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laurafox 's review for:
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
by Edward E. Baptist
God damn.
Describing the execution of Amar, one of the central figures of the 1811 slave revolt in the Lower Mississippi Valley:
"The militia stood Amar up in the yard at the Widow Charbonnet's place. Herded into an audience, the men, women, and children who knew him had to watch. The white men took aim and made Amar's body dance with a volley of lead. In his head, as he slumped and fell, were 50 billion neurons. They held the secrets of turning sugarcane sap into white crystals, they held the memories that made him smile at just such a joke, they held the cunning with which he sought out his lover's desires, they held the names of all the people who stood circled in silence. His cheek pressed on earth that his own feet had helped to pack, his mouth slackly coursing out blood, as gunpowder smoke gathered in a cloud and blew east. A white officer's sideways boots strode toward him. The dancing electrons in Amar's brain caressed forty-five years of words, pictures, feelings, the village imam with his old book, his mother calling him from the door of a mud-brick house. The memory of a slave ship or maybe more than one, the rumor of Saint-Domingue -- all this was there, was him -- but his cells were cascading into sudden death. One last involuntary wheeze as a soldier raised an axe sharpened by recent practice and severed Amar's head from his body" (65).
So after finishing this book (and after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's article in the Atlantic this summer), I'm completely convinced of the need for the American government to start issuing reparations. The immensity of the crime perpetuated against African-Americans -- both under slavery and Jim Crow -- is nothing short of astonishing. Baptist's work really has illuminated a (forgive the pun) white-washed historical truth: that without the forced abduction, migration, and labor of millions of people, this country would have emerged in the 19th century as little more than a post-colonial backwater.
Describing the execution of Amar, one of the central figures of the 1811 slave revolt in the Lower Mississippi Valley:
"The militia stood Amar up in the yard at the Widow Charbonnet's place. Herded into an audience, the men, women, and children who knew him had to watch. The white men took aim and made Amar's body dance with a volley of lead. In his head, as he slumped and fell, were 50 billion neurons. They held the secrets of turning sugarcane sap into white crystals, they held the memories that made him smile at just such a joke, they held the cunning with which he sought out his lover's desires, they held the names of all the people who stood circled in silence. His cheek pressed on earth that his own feet had helped to pack, his mouth slackly coursing out blood, as gunpowder smoke gathered in a cloud and blew east. A white officer's sideways boots strode toward him. The dancing electrons in Amar's brain caressed forty-five years of words, pictures, feelings, the village imam with his old book, his mother calling him from the door of a mud-brick house. The memory of a slave ship or maybe more than one, the rumor of Saint-Domingue -- all this was there, was him -- but his cells were cascading into sudden death. One last involuntary wheeze as a soldier raised an axe sharpened by recent practice and severed Amar's head from his body" (65).
So after finishing this book (and after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's article in the Atlantic this summer), I'm completely convinced of the need for the American government to start issuing reparations. The immensity of the crime perpetuated against African-Americans -- both under slavery and Jim Crow -- is nothing short of astonishing. Baptist's work really has illuminated a (forgive the pun) white-washed historical truth: that without the forced abduction, migration, and labor of millions of people, this country would have emerged in the 19th century as little more than a post-colonial backwater.