Ep. 8, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Not "a Nation of Immigrants"
Jeffrey Sachs
Economics professor, bestselling author, innovative educator, UN advisor, and global leader in sustainable development.
How did we come to understand the United States to be “a nation of immigrants?” Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz joins the Book Club to debunk the myth of the “immigrant” nation with the truth: the United States is a white settler colonialist state, and has been since it’s very founding. She tell us that while immigrants come to an already existing society, settler colonialists come to steal land, move people out, and take that land for themselves. The settlers at Plymouth Rock and Jamestown came to land that had been cultivated by agrarian Native nations including the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Creek Muskogee people, stole it, appropriated it, and violently conquered the people.?
The myth of the immigrant founders continues today, most recently with the revival of the story of Alexander Hamilton. Dunbar-Ortiz tells us that Hamilton was not an immigrant; he was a privileged, white British citizen, trained as an apprentice in accounting of slaves and sugar, who married into one of the biggest slave-owning and trading families in New York. He was also one of the loudest voices against immigration in the years after the American Revolution.?
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz joins this episode of the Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs to speak about her new book, “Not ‘a Nation of Immigrants’” and discuss the white settler colonialist founding of this nation, the establishment of the United States as a military fiscal state, how the well-known narratives and lies of US history continue to be told today, and the “good addiction” of looking to the future for hope.?
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Next up, the Book Club welcomes Corey Robin, author of "The Reactionary Mind." Join us for the LIVE conversation on October 25 at 1:00 pm EDT: https://bit.ly/JSBC_CoreyRobin
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Transformative Thinker, Scholar-Diplomat, Author and Political-Economy Advisor
8 个月"Daring, Delightful and Transformative" We exist in a bizarre combination of Stoneage emotions, medieval beliefs (and institutions) but Godlike technology. That is how we (mankind) have lurched into (what we call) the 21st Century - One well known Harvard Prof. Emeritus writing a Foreword in the book by another even more well-known Prof. of Columbia, two of the best-known global centers of academic excellence, power houses of historical knowledge and new ideas. Any wonder we are where we are?
Transformative Thinker, Scholar-Diplomat, Author and Political-Economy Advisor
8 个月Transformative Thinker, Scholar-Diplomat, Author and Political-Economy Advisor
8 个月Consultant/ Program Director for PLF
10 个月Happy new year from Mayange, Rwanda. I am one of the team for the former Mayange Millennium Villages Project. I like your publications as they are based on tangible experiences gained from the real situation on ground. Keep it ip.
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1 年I'd talk (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/using-linkedin-part-5-julian-dumitrascu) with you about this. When are you going to focus on this topic again?