HOW DID WE [U S of A] GET HERE? SOME BOOKS TO EXPLAIN WHY...

[@HungryEyes-sl3mu]

Californian here, the inmate firefighters make about $2 per day, which is a high paying job for prison inmates. Despite California having a statewide shortage of skilled firefighters these inmates are barred from becoming professionals by state law. And if that wasn't shameful enough, we had a bill on the ballot to end that prisoner/slavery loophole in our constitution and guess who voted against it? All the Palisades residents (and so many many more).

[@_lorijade89]

Thank you for sharing these 💜

[@Books_on_the_Brain]

Same thing was going through my mind as I was watching that RFK hearing. I was disgusted. Thanks for making this video, it's needed and appreciated.

[@JessOwens]

🩵🩵🩵

[@Evelyn_Okay]

This is exactly why our current administration (the Federalist Society) banned the observance of Black History Month. And this is exactly why I'm watching and sharing essays by Black creators who are sharing their thoughts and life experiences. If we don't hear it, we won't know it, and we can't recognize it 💜

[@Yosoybean]

I am also a millennial who went to school in rural Texas - first I will admit I do not have the best recall memory but I feel like slavery in Texas was undersold (you don’t need so much labor on ranches…) Then like you said, it felt like Emancipation Proclamation yada yada Civil Rights! Yay! A lot happened in that yada yada and after.

[@JessOwens]

Like I know I don't remember a lot from high school, but I know that we got very little on Black history and it's even less now. So sad.

[@Yosoybean]

I had to take a year of Texas history. I think a year of history in diversity would have been more useful. It would have been a great time to discuss issues with the historical record as well.

[@justineetzkorn9594]

Thank you for making this video! I really liked The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, about the Great Migration. It's flat out one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read, on a technical level, and very informative about why Black families left the South, and the problems they faced in the North. He book Caste is also really good.

[@Madison-v6m1u]

Thank you for recommending these books. My current mental state won’t allow me to read them, but when it improves, if it ever improves 😂😩. I will check them out. 💜

[@SheriMaple]

I think Medical Apartheid is fine. However, a new book on reproductive health and Black maternal health should be a book of its own. You're right that there are many books. I have some I could recommend: Black Reconstruction by W.E.B Du Bois Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History by Laura E. Helton Early Negro Writing, edited by Dorothy Porter Dangerous Learning by Derek Black, just published How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz California, a Slave State by Jean Pfaelzer A Southern Underground Railroad: Black Georgians and Promise of Spanish America and Indian Country by Paul M. Pressley 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Manna

[@stardustmemory000083]

Black Reconstruction should be required reading for every American. The past two weeks have been one long echo of Andrew Johnson's drunken, hate-filled tirades against the Black delegations that petitioned him for more support of the Freedmen's Bureau and additional military protection for Black Americans attempting to exercise their political rights during Reconstruction. Just pure, naked, gleeful racism.

[@xDianaMoonx]

A great recommendation list! I don't read NF very often outside of schooling, but been trying to break away from that. I also sadly can't seem to find my old syllabi that had some great reading as I took various classes on the history of the US through other cultures. But here's two I would recommend! Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood by Clara E. Rodríguez goes through the perceptions of race/culture & Latinx people through Hollywood. Which is important to the current political climate since so many people learn through media, especially with current leaders having developed their following through media. Another fascinating and eye-opening book is an older one but Hidden from History Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. It's a collection of academic essays pinpointing stuff rom around the world through the ages up to WWII. While there's a good amount of essays regarding the US (like San Francisco and South Carolina in the late 1800s and then the Harlem Renaissance), the other world ones also informs everything else. It's a cheaper paperback book (probably used) but *highly* rec. Amazon has pictures of the list of essays if you're unsure.

[@smileybetty8]

Thank you for this list of great books to read. I have heard of Henrietta Lacks awhile back from Dr.Delbert Blair. Very fascinating but I would not want to be made angry and upset by what happened to her and her descendants. Here are two books that I have recently finished reading that are good: With Ossie and Ruby In This Life Together, and Unbreak My Heart A Memoir Toni Braxton. I am currently reading: Cicely Tyson Just As I Am and Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes

[@anniannianniii]

for 2:30 The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk is so informative and vital!!! (For North American continent Indigenous history)

[@GigiDelores]

I've been meaning to read The New Jim Crow for years. Thanks for the reviews and recommendations! Definitely will take a look at all of them.

[@RadiantBard]

I was lucky growing up. My teachers were typically really frank about things, especially as I got older. I remember my very white, very soccer mom 10th grade history teacher going on a very impassioned rant about the colonization of Hawai'i. She was brutally honest about westward expansion. She said 'manifest destiny' with all the contempt it deserved. She fought the school board so she could have us watch the movie Rosewood. She won. She was probably my most aggressively leftist teacher until college, but not the only one. I'm from Appalachia, and this was the year 2006. I worry that if a teacher tried this now, they'd lose their job faster than you could blink.

[@noelanikaanana]

Great recommendations, I will definitely be picking up a few of these soon.

[@sarahstarbell]

I genuinely wish the people who actually needed to read these books would read them, but they're too busy listening to RFK and people instead and probably haven't picked up a book since 8th grade. It's become depressing to know that I can educate myself as much as I want, but the majority of people aren't doing that and are just feeding into all the disinformation out there. But anyway, love the recommendations, I'll definitely check out a few of these!

[@anniannianniii]

8:50 yessss oh my god I keep trying to get my family to read this book!!! I wish I could get all of my family and friends to read it, it’s so vital

[@cuppa.books.]

🖤🖤🖤

[@katecreates1659]

Im white and from the UK. But this is probably the most important KZbin video I have watched in a long time. I have shared it with as many people as I can.

[@Hiloyflor]

An indigenous peoples history of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, I read it with my book club. Truly like a base text I feel of explaining how the United States operates and functions (and ultimately how fragile it is because of it).

[@Jack.mandora]

Thanks for this! Really timely video.

[@cristaalxD]

I just recently read “The War Against All Puerto Ricans” which discusses the time period of 1898-1950 and all of the massacres and suppression of pro liberation movements in PR by the US. Also “All the Shah’s Men” about the first CIA mission to overthrow a foreign government in Iran. It’s just funny that people continue to think that the US is so great and altruistic when they have been at the scene of the crime for so many human rights violations at home and abroad

[@hill7052]

thank you for sharing. Def checking them out

[@jgee19]

Great list Jess! I have read/own all but MedicalApartheid, which I have now added to my books to buy list. I had a strong urge at the beginning of last year to buy certain books and I couldn’t understand why, until that day I. November and it all made sense. Read, buy them now because we don’t know how long we will have the ability to do so. 😢

[@MadoCar-n4s]

Thank you for the video

[@Michelelynnreads]

Thank you for doing this video. Your recommendations are spot on, and I will be adding several to my TBR, especially medical apartheid. I know there has been a lot of forced sterilization of disabled women who have been/are institutionalized, especially black women. It’s so infuriating where we are!!! For disability rights, Judy Heumann’s memoir is a good place to start. There’s so much more we aren’t taught and told. It’s hard to know who is reporting the truth. Uugghh.

[@blackbibliophile_atlarge108]

Thanks Jess for this video. I print the banned books every year so that I can read as many as possible . I would like to recommend The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones.

[@themusicsnob]

Great recommendations! I cannot recommend highly enough the book The Stonewall Riots by Gayle E. Pitman as a basic overview of recent LGBTQ civil rights history and activism in the U.S. It is written for kids, so it is short and accessible, but such an excellent overview.

[@whynterstorme9592]

That clip at the end has me feeling ill. I don't watch the news and stay off anything not book/art related for the most part. I get my news here on KZbin. To know that things are THAT crazy, I mean I knew. But I didn't KNOW, you know. My depression has really taken a plummet into scary territory but it feels like we're just so powerless. We just have to sit here and watch these things happen, AGAIN and what can we really do? Right now, my hope is at 0, but I hope I can crawl out of this mental state to have some optimism at some point. Thank you for this list.

[@UnnaturalBookJunkieHaley]

If you liked the color of law check out the mapping prejudice project from the university of minnesota!

[@asmrbookishness]

An excellent list of recommendations! I just started The Immortal Life on Henrietta Lacks yesterday and that story is fascinating! I would recommend An Indigenous History of the United States and Transgender History since you mentioned those were areas of interest for you.

[@jessicadoneganreads]

Great recommendations.

[@smittenforfiction]

♥

[@chocolateoreo6489]

❤❤❤

[@nataliemoon1512]

All the ways media protects men in power and specific examples is in the book ~ lead me where the light is ours by n.galilea

[@DefectedFundie]

Fierce Desires by Rebecca Davis is an excellent book about the history of sexuality and gender in the U.S.

[@DefectedFundie]

I also found Under the Skin by Linda Villarosa and Medical Bondage by Diedre Cooper Owens to be very helpful to understanding better the role that Black women have had in developing gynecological knowledge and the discrimination Black people face in the U.S. health care system today. How to Hide and Empire by Daniel Immerwahr also touches upon some of the U.S.' systemic physical mistreatment of its citizens.

[@kimhill8228]

I just know all of these books are going to piss me off the same way Killers of The Flower Moon did. I won't even watch the film.

[@LittleJoSleep]

Oh no! I didn't know we felt negatively about Ibram X Kendi! I've recommended that book so much. Off to do some googling to see what the matter is. 😬🫠