AN AFRO-INDIGENOUS HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, colloquial, conversational, controversial

AN AFRO-INDIGENOUS HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
KYLE T. MAYS
Beacon Press
$27.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The first intersectional history of the Black and Native American struggle for freedom in our country that also reframes our understanding of who was Indigenous in early America

Beginning with pre-Revolutionary America and moving into the movement for Black lives and contemporary Indigenous activism, Afro-Indigenous historian Kyle T. Mays argues that the foundations of the US are rooted in antiblackness and settler colonialism, and that these parallel oppressions continue into the present. He explores how Black and Indigenous peoples have always resisted and struggled for freedom, sometimes together, and sometimes apart. Whether to end African enslavement and Indigenous removal or eradicate capitalism and colonialism, Mays show how the fervor of Black and Indigenous peoples calls for justice have consistently sought to uproot white supremacy.

Mays uses a wide-array of historical activists and pop culture icons, “sacred” texts, and foundational texts like the Declaration of Independence and Democracy in America. He covers the civil rights movement and freedom struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, and explores current debates around the use of Native American imagery and the cultural appropriation of Black culture. Mays compels us to rethink both our history as well as contemporary debates and to imagine the powerful possibilities of Afro-Indigenous solidarity.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: What a great idea for Beacon Press to do this series, ReVisioning History. Selecting creators for the almost infinite numbers of topics available to expand our existing explanations of US History must be a nightmare. Author Mays is a scholar of Popular Culture (Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America, SUNY Press 2018), African American culture, Indigenous culture...among other things...working out of UCLA. In this book, he makes very plain the roots of racism in capitalist profit-seeking, and highlights the Indigenous dispossessions as another facet of capitalist settler colonialism's project to entrench white supremacy.

So is this something to give your sugar dumplin' for a romantic read-along? Probably not. Is it something to give your sugar dumplin'? Yes. We're well past the stage of needing any help "feeling comfortable" my fellow white folk. The need now is for us to get with the program of what needs to come next. The subject this book has in its sights is how we got where we are, what where we are means, and how to move forward in a positive and inclusive direction.

In the time of #BlackLivesMatter, I'm not sure I see a way forward that isn't plagued by violence. I'm not at all eager to find out I'm correct, of course. What I suggest to all reading this is, go get the book and see what got us here before opining upon the ways we should or should not proceed. Believe me when I tell you that the way you think we got here is, in fact, not that whole story and to effectively influence the course of future events you'd best be fully au fait with the full spectrum of facts.

The toughest part of the read for me was the simultaneous sense that the author's boiling mad and icy furious, and reaches for the facetious blade in those circumstances. While it's not unjustified, the overall more controlled, academic prose suddenly breaking out in snark is jarring (eg, an early use of the pejorative "hotepness" made me wonder where this was going to recrudesce).

Guns aren't the only weapon of choice for police officers. We must ask this question: Where do police officers learn the techniques that lead to the violent brutalization and death of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx peoples? The martial arts community. When we see a police officer mounting a Black person and controlling their wrists and legs, holding them in a chokehold, putting their knee on someone's neck, you know where they learned that from? A martial artist. They learn chokeholds from Brazilian jujitsu experts. ... In this regard, we also have to hold the martial arts community accountable. ... I've been to at least a few gyms in my life and always see someone who has all the signs of a white supremacist. Don't train them. I understand you have bills to pay and deserve to be paid for your labor, but you are actively teaching people who commit violence against Black and Indigenous people. If you want to help someone, actively recruit and train the people who are suffering from police violence in order that they can defend themselves.

The end does not support the beginning. "I understand you have bills to pay" is pretty snotty...if I, over-sixty white guy, said it to the author, he'd be incandescent with rage...and there's absolutely no recognition that the end of the clause does not contain any sort of mechanism for the beginning to be dealt with.

Anyway, while there's a lot to address in the world, there's also a lot to address in this book. It makes for a good read because perspective changes are urgently needed all around, and there's no bad place to start working toward a new, more flexible way of framing your personal conversation with it.