I am as white as the day is long. I have never set foot outside of the south. I’m just starting Settlers rn and it is very insightful. It does, however, have me afraid of my own ignorance. I’m the only person from my neck of the woods that I would even call somewhat “progressive”, but still. I am aware I was raised in privilege and surrounded by hate. (I even attended a segregated school for many years as a child…) I’ve always been pretty proud of how far I’ve come, but I feel like I still probably have some things ingrained in me that need to be smashed up. Recommendations welcome for all kinds of topics. I like to read and learn from whatever is put in front of me.
Frank recommended some great stuff!
If you still find yourself with US mythology
Zinn’s A People’s History and Loewen’s Lies my Teacher Told Me are a must. Keeping in mind they both at some level have anti-commie brainworms.
Continuing US history, Horne’s Counter-revolution of 1776, Beard’s Economic Interpretation of the US Constitution, and Davis’s Women, Race, and Class. Should pretty much cement that most of what you were taught about US history and the revolution is bullshit.
Then you can get into foreign policy with Blackshirts and Reds, The Jakarta Method, Washington Bullets, Blowback Podcast.
If you want a primer on Neoliberalism and how it’s taken over Frank’s Listen Liberal, Mayer’s Dark Money, and MacClean’s Democracy in Chains has you covered by examining neoliberalism’s rise in US political parties and media capture.
These are my key recommendations that helped me clean my brain out, excluding Feinberg and Fanon that Frank covered. Pick and choose as necessary, but the groups I have them in tend to compliment each other real well.
Oh, and it’s fiction, but as a straight white guy myself I definitely recommend Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin. It’s about Trans-people fighting against Terfs in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Some of the internal dialogue is heartbreaking but important to read, imo.
Black shirts and reds (along with yellow parenti) is what got me started
didn’t A People’s History kinda whitewash Bacon’s Rebellion or am I misremembering how it was presented?
Entirely possible, Bacon’s Rebellion is still something I need to read more about. Just looking over the pages dedicated to it in a People’s History, Zinn largely seems to posit that Bacon was pushing for more conflict with Native Americans to grow his wealth while the people that followed him (which included the enslaved and servants) were seeking to level the inequality. My own understanding from what little reading I’ve done including Counter-Revolution of 1776 is that what made it a big historical turning point is the alliance between enslaved PoC and poor whites scared the rich so much that it massively popularized the adoption of Freedom of Religion as a major ethos in order to become a selling point to whites back in the UK. Specifically Scots around that time period, iirc. Essentially birthing the idea of whiteness by uniting Europeans of differing religious backgrounds.
Thank you
Welcome