by Rich Wandschneider | Jan 14, 2021 | Caste, David Treuer, Ibram X. Kendi, Isabel Wilkerson, Jill Lepore, Philip J. Deloria
I’m half-way through Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, and while the writing is superb, and the argument that Caste is a more accurate description and useful tool than Race is in assessing American history, I am once again disappointed in a...
by Rich Wandschneider | Jan 6, 2021 | David McCullough, Ibram X. Kendi, Indian Horse, James Baldwin, Jill Lepore, Kent Nerburn, Louise Erdrich. Turtle Mountain Reservation, Nez Perce, Night Watchman, Richard Wagamese, These Truths
Turning the page is a common metaphor for beginning a new year—often implying that we are leaving what was unpleasant in the last year behind. There was plenty of unpleasant in 2020, but some good things happened too, sometimes in spite of or even as a result of the...
by Rich Wandschneider | Nov 2, 2020 | assimilation, Ibram X. Kendi, Indians in unexpected places, Philip J. Deloria, racism, Stamped from the Beginning
One of the first axioms of White-Indian relations I remember hearing from Alvin Josephy was that from the moment Europeans hit the North American shore, indigenous peoples had three choices: they could move away; they could become white; or they could die....
by Rich Wandschneider | Oct 8, 2020 | boarding schools, Canadian hockey, hockey, Ibram X. Kendi, Indian boarding schools, Indian Horse, Milkweed, Ojibwa, Richard Wagamese
The name—its explanation comes on the first pages of the book—pulls you into the story. The writing is measured and strong and beautiful—“The Old Ones say that our long straight hair comes from the waving grasses that thatch the edges of bays. Our feet and hands are...
by Rich Wandschneider | Sep 23, 2020 | Alvin Josephy, assimilation, Ibram X. Kendi, original sin, racism, slavery, white supremacy
“No adverse impact visited on the 1492 voyage of “discovery” was more profound in its consequences in every nook and cranny of the Americas than Columbus’s introduction of Western European ethnocentricity to the Indians’ worlds....
by Rich Wandschneider | Sep 21, 2020 | assimilation, GI Bill, Ibram X. Kendi, Jim Crow, racism, Relocation program, segregation, Termination act, white superiority
Ibram X. Kendi’s book, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, is an exhaustive catalog of religious, social, and economic attitudes and policies that began with the importation of African slaves and continue to this day. The...
