Good Book Review About How Race Survived US History: From Settlement And Slavery To The Obama Phenomenonby

Racism remains one of the most difficult topics that have generated a heated debate in the United States. In fact, the United States has experienced issues aligned with racism since a long time ago. Rodgers’ book, “How Race Survived US History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon” offers a substantive review on various issues regarding racism. To be precise, the first three chapters of Roediger’s books over an overview of how the idea of racism has been reinvented over time in the United States history. The United States has experienced several historical events such as the American civil war, and the civil rights movement period, which sought to address the issue of racism. Even so, these historical periods failed to offer adequate ways of doing away with racism.
In chapter one, Roediger notes that various decision making concerns the history of the United States have often been influenced by race and racism. In explaining this, Roediger focuses on elections for various posts such as school officials, unions, realtors, and corporates have been marred by racism. This has precipitated the persistent occurrence of racial inequalities. While it is true that some of the racial inequalities may have occurred spontaneously, some appear to be purposive whereby supremacy of the whites has been embedded in various realms across the United States. Roediger further notes that racism against the minorities led to the eventual enslavement of African Americans and elimination of Native Americans. In a nutshell, Roediger deduces that there is no period in history where America has been without racism.
In exploring this issue of race and racism, Roediger offers substantive examples that justify the fact that indeed America was highly involved in the perpetuation of racism. In chapter two, Roediger notes that in the conventional European society, people identified themselves depending on their nationalities and not their race or skin colour. It was after the colonization if the United States that the issue of racism became highly rampant. After the colonization of the United States, there emerged the need for a system that could ease the identification of slaves and the non-slaves. As such, skin colour was adopted as the primary means for such identifications. The emergence of capitalism paved way for another form of racism whereby the whites expanded their wealth, privileges, and rights at the expense of the minority groups who were subjected to harsh working conditions with little pay. This ensured that the minorities remained in poverty, whereas the whites increased their wealth.
Even after the end of slavery, racism remained rooted in the United States as the industrial period paved way for another form of slavery whereby slave ownership was regarded highly. This was evident by cases whereby insurance industries emerged with the purpose of allowing slave owners to insure the risk associated with slave ownership. In chapter three, Roediger discusses the period after the civil war whereby race was still an eminent issue in the United States. This was evident by the fact that racial managers for commercial companies were the ones in charge of Asian and black peasants. These racial managers had their own theories on the races that were deemed good or bad. In conclusion, Roediger emphasizes on the primary fact that the United States history has been marked by the transformation of race and racism across various American realms.