Reviews for 101 Real Money Questions: The African American Financial Question and Answer Book

The average rating for 101 Real Money Questions: The African American Financial Question and Answer Book based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-02-19 00:00:00 Andrew Runge A critique on the various forms of black leadership over the last century, "Black Leadership" is a short but thorough examination. Marable delves into the historic conditions that shaped the leadership at the time. Understanding different times & different stages of capitalism makes it easier to understand some of their immediate goals & why some things may have appeared to make sense before but do not make sense any longer given our current conditions. First focus is Booker T. & his belief in self-reliance & economic empowerment & accommodation of white supremacy & racism. He believed economic empowerment would make racism irrelevant. Many of his ideals fit well into "bootstrap" rhetoric, so it's not difficult to see why white people liked him. He seemed not to be able to see the big picture of capitalism, which most of us don't ourselves, & could understand it only insofar as that money meant power, not understanding accumulation was easily gained for white capitalists on the backs of black labor. Next, Marable moves onto W.E.B Du Bois. It seems that in anything involving discussion of leaders, if he or Booker T. is mentioned, the other is sure to follow. They were contemporaries & ideologically opposed. Du Bois, not without his faults, didn't believe in accommodation. He did initially believe in the "talented tenth", a small group of our own that should lead us. Nonetheless, he did believe black people should challenge white supremacy & was consistent in that regard. Various encounters influenced & shaped his political beliefs & leanings throughout his life & some of those are traced here. Although not a believer of the supernatural, there is a chapter dedicated to his "faith" in black people which is written as something similar & seems out of place & unnecessary. He did recognize the connections of white supremacy in the U.S. & imperialism & colonialism & sought to challenge that. Organized sever Pan-African Congress conventions. Ultimately, these fell short of their goals, to me, mainly because to some degree though not seeking to accommodate oppression, they still to some degree sought to appeal to the oppressors. Most of these conferences were outside of the U.S. & we're not accessible to most working-class black people it seems. He was monitored & they did open themselves up to political opportunism by black people from other places, serving the interests of the colonizers. Blaise Diagne was a glaring example. Ultimately, if a thing is not accessible to the masses of those at the bottom, it's not radical. This doesn't take away from the many contributions Du Bois made, especially with his writings. The role of intellectuals is analyzed next. Intellectual doesn't necessarily mean that in the traditional academic sense. There have always been & likely always will be those among the oppressed, with no access to bourgeois education, that illuminate the reality of what their community goes through. They may not have access to specific kinds of resources or the latest methods, but they are there on the ground, in the field, typically taking action & that is something that should never be discounted. This role can also be played via art & literature & there was an interesting point about the period of the Harlem Renaissance of the pressures, & the acquiescence of some to it, of appealing strictly to bourgeois culture, essentially being as little Negro as possible & more American & it's arguably something we still struggle with today. From there, Marable traces the brief histories of various Pan-African organizations & their leaders. The foundation these organizations laid down should not be forgotten. From there, Du Bois' history for world peace as connected to the struggle for black liberation is traced. We get accounts of his efforts as well as criticism & obstacles from his peers as well as the United States. Taken on the surface, the call for world peace can be mistakenly seen as tone deaf & leaving the black struggle behind. That is very far from the truth. He recognized the U.S. as an imperialist power, oppressing black & colored people across the globe & true peace could only include the absence of this oppression. He seems to have been a man with many connections & far reaching influence & his views, particularly as to how U.S. imperialism is related to the black liberation struggle in particular & global oppression in general, were shared by few of his contemporaries regardless of race. He worked & spoked out continuously up until his death. It's clear that to only focus on his work from specific time frames, particularly his early work, as opposed to his entire body of work is a mistake. Marable then traces the political climate during Harold Washington's campaign & re-election as mayor of Chicago. He breaks down the various ethnic groups, their voting habits as influenced by their status in society, the tensions amongst them all & the tensions they had with black people. It is yet another example of how whiteness always gets chosen over everything, whether it's ethic groups propped up by whiteness due to their proximity to it or even supposed left-wing radicals. It's also an example of where black political action groups & leaders fail in not including any type of class analysis & finding a way for middle-class blacks to become increasingly radical despite their class status & our dependency on personalities that tends to get in the way of effective political action. Human psychology at work I suppose. Next is the question of race versus ethnicity in America & what that (lack of understanding) means for all groups. How the two are defined & interact, unevenly as they do, affect how people are seen & treated by society in general & the power structures of this country. As far as that fits with politics & access to power, be it political or material via capital, as legal segregation was abolished, the waters were muddied for interactions between black people that crossed class lines. Whereas before the would be black middle-class was dependent upon the black working-class & lower classes for business or forced to interact with them by sharing communities & institutions like churches, Marable points out specifically how black middle & upper classes sought to transcend their blackness for political gain. This has an even larger impact when one takes into account that as these people moved to the suburbs, they created their own versions of institutions like the church, thus separating themselves from the black working-class & poor. This brings up an issue of culture, which Marable was pointing to white people's lack of it & searching for it via mass media & pop culture, which steaks from everyone, hence the term culture vulture, I would think this also means for black people moving up, there is also some divorcing from the roots of black culture to identify more with mainstream things. All of this & more are easily allowed to happen I'm absence of institutions that would act as checks & balances against black people stepping on their own for material & political gain according to Marable. I think that is something very important to understand as at best some people will only be culturally black but will ultimately fall in line with their class status in regards to challenging the status quo & ultimately evoking change. They will be necessarily limited & not understanding this will ultimately limit any mass movements that initially unite black people across class lines. Next, the conservative nature of black nationalism historically & of specific leaders & groups is addressed. If you talk about Booker T. & Du Bois, it seems you must also include Marcus Garvey in your discussion. While he was flawed in his outlook, especially as it pertains to what black capitalism can do for black people, it must be recognized that he had the charisma & power to move the masses. He was taken seriously enough by the U.S. government to be deported. Marable also talks about the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad & Louis Farrakahn. They also had the power to move the masses. What they also ultimately have on common is that they were socially conservative & patriarchal. They all also met with the KKK, Nazis & other conservative & racist people & groups. The reason being that, though this appears odd on the surface to almost anyone, they have much in common in regards to their conservatism, patriarchy & notions of racial separatism. The key difference being that white nationalists & conservatives have a government & society built for them to give them most of what they want. This ties back to what Marable mentioned earlier as the lack of institutions to act as a check & balance against supposed leaders using political means for their own benefit & ultimately betraying the interests of black people collectively. It's an example of political opportunism of the worst kind & it speaks to why a class analysis is necessary in addition to a racial one. Finally, there is a brief tracing of labor & it's history with black people. It is not a good one, as (white) labor has consistently chosen whiteness over class solidarity something often ignored by leftists who also tend to be class reductionists. The problem isn't a lack of recognition of the need for class solidarity, at least not on the part of black people, but it is this lack of recognition on the part of white labor which has historically forced black people to strive for solely racial progress, which has it's limits. If there is ever to be solidarity & organizing, that organizing must be more than a struggle for better wages. It must be a recognition of the power that people collectively hold & a struggle for fundamentally changing society & our relations to production. Overall, this book surprised me very much. Exceeded my expectations & only got better as the book went along, save for one chapter about Du Bois & faith. Fortunately it is one of the briefer chapters in the book. It traces the various forms that black leadership has taken & continues to take, analyzes where their strengths were/are & ultimately where their limits are & where they fail. Pretty thorough for a fairly short book & should be read if one wants to understand our successes in the past & our limitations & failures so as to improve in the future.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-11 00:00:00 Dennis Williams 2018 Reading Challenge - A book by a local author This book focuses on Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois and the legacy they fostered in the politics of Black America. The section of W.E.B. Dubois was incredibly informative and comprehensive. I appreciated the exploration of Marcus Garvey's movement, while having Pan African elements a la Dubois, but was economically rooted in the conservative politics/economics of Washington. There were also sections on the former Chicago mayor, Harold Washington, and Louis Farrakhan. While the actually writing of the book could be a bit dry at times, it was packed full of information.