US History – Michael Harriot’s book: Racist Baby has to give up

A whitewashed fairy tale is the official history of America. Michael Harriot’s book, on the other hand, focuses on how this history has been significantly shaped by black people since the arrival of the first European settlers 400 years ago.

In his 500-page book, the renowned journalist and cultural critic Harriot turns the prevailing textbook history of the USA on its head. He shows how the first European settlers would have starved to death without black agricultural know-how. And the Revolutionary War with England (1775 to 1783) was not just about taxes on tea or the American colony’s lack of political representation. The white settlers were bothered by the fact that slavery was not allowed in Britain and feared that London would “deprive an honest American of his slave.” In the Revolutionary War itself, black soldiers were an essential factor – and both sides, “patriots” and “loyalists”, promised partial freedom from slavery in order to be able to access this resource. The contribution of black soldiers to the victory over the slave-holding southern states in the American Civil War was even greater a hundred years after the Revolution. Nothing was given for free by the whites, every progress was hard-won, every millimeter of freedom had to be defended against constant racist setbacks. Harriot dramatically describes these setbacks in the form of the waves of lynching after the defeat of the southern states and the abolition of slavery, and again after the First World War, when black soldiers came back and self-confidently demanded their rights.

The descriptions are shocking, as is the fact that the then US President Woodrow Wilson had the Ku Klux Klan propaganda film “Birth of a Nation” shown publicly in the White House in 1915. In the following years, the KKK led the lynch mobs that tortured, mutilated, burned and hanged countless people. The same president also appointed the notorious secret service chief Edgar Hoover, who fought the communist movement with all means in the 1920s and later used even more drastic means in the state’s fight against the civil rights movement. Harriot’s book chapter revealing this story is, tellingly, called “The Conspiracy Theory That Was True.”

Harriot’s story is historically based through rich source material and based on real facts and people. However, it is not an academic book, but popularized history in a colloquial narrative tone, peppered with ironic remarks. In places, historical events are imaginatively embellished, for example when the detailed course of an uprising is described in a film-like manner.

The accessibility of this very extensive work is further increased by its relaxed form. After each chapter there are snappy “comprehension questions” and tasks, such as the following:
What triggered racial terrorism during Reconstruction?

a. White supremacy.

b. White people to maintain their political, economic and social dominance.

c. The fear that white people won’t dominate.

d. Predominant whiteness.

Harriot uses different narrative styles. In addition to chapters with classic accounts of historical events, there are short excursions to Africa or southern cuisine. Sometimes “Uncle Rob,” who is 20 years his senior, takes the floor to explain political conflicts in a less intellectual, more outspoken way – for example, how the Democrats and Republicans have completely switched in relation to the black electorate. In between there are dialogues with the “Racist Baby,” who carries with him the lies and prejudices he inherited from his father. “Racist Baby” initially appears completely unreasonable towards the demand for reparations, i.e. compensation for the injustice committed against African Americans. This unpunished injustice has many facets: slavery, segregation, legal and social discrimination. And even after the civil rights laws, the discrimination did not stop, for example in the form of theft from black taxpayers, whose money flows into projects and infrastructure that predominantly benefit white people. Through persistent and convincing arguments, “Racist Baby” ultimately has to give up his resistance to the demand for reparations. The chapter about the largely underestimated role of black women in the liberation movement, such as Mary Terrell or Ella Baker, is very strong. In the form of a letter “to his imprisoned cousin,” Harriot illustrates how the prison system, with its disproportionately black inmates, was expanded into a new type of slavery with underpaid forced labor.

The agony of white supremacy is very present with Donald Trump. Harriot writes that Trump “simply convinced his white co-conspirators that the only way they could be successful is to put their foot down on people who look different than them.” The dark-skinned people. The black people. The non-Christian people. Isn’t that the most American idea?”

Harriot’s book aims to strengthen resistance to this backlash, and one can only hope that the next chapter of US history will not again be about “predominant whiteness.”

Michael Harriot: Black As F***. The True History of the USA. Harper Collins publishing group, 560 pages, hardcover, €26.