Material Roots of Racism and Caste Stratification
NLF Highlights for April
Table of Contents
- Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa: The Continued Relevance of a Landmark Book / Bill Fletcher, Jr., New Labor Forum
- Reinventing Solidarity Episode 29: “Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India
- “A People’s Guide to New York City,” Tuesday, April 12, 2022 – CUNY SLU Event
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by Bill Fletcher, Jr, New Labor Forum
It is difficult to overstate the importance and impact of the 1972 publication of Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. In this major contribution, Rodney reaffirmed the centrality and relevance of Africa in world history; the impact of the rape of Africa in the development and expansion of European and Euro-American capitalism; and the challenges that awaited the post-colonial world. This landmark book’s fiftieth anniversary provides a welcome opportunity for its reassessment.
Read the full article here
In this episode, we turn to India’s two-millennia-old caste system that has often been compared to our own structures of racial oppression. A recent book, Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India, provides a sort of memoir of caste viewed through the experiences author Sujatha Gidla’s Dalit family. Speaking with New Labor Forum Editor-at-Large Kafui Attoh, Gidla says she drew motivation and courage to write this personal account by witnessing individual and collective acts of resistance of African Americans. A resident of the U.S. since age 26, Gidla completed the writing of the book while working as a New York City train conductor and member of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union.
Listen here: SLU.CUNY.EDU/PODCAST