Friday Open Thread ~ "What are you reading?" edition ~ The Bittersweet Science

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Boxing, the historian Gerald Horne argues in his engaging and meticulously researched new book, was effectively weaponized by Blacks in the battle against white supremacy.

Toxic masculinity and other offshoots (including homophobia) are a major theme of this book and the author does not neglect women boxers–and wrestlers too—whose skills were honed in day-to-day battles with the pestilence that is male supremacy.

This book traces the story of Black dominance in the sport, from fighting en-slavers in Africa, through the brutal “battle royals” of slavery when enslaved men were placed in a ring blindfolded and forced to fight until one man was left standing, while, at the same time, it exposes the gross exploitation of fighters and the gargantuan profits garnered by the likes of Don King, Bob Arum–and a former Atlantic City casino poseur named Donald J. Trump.

Gerald Horne on the Political Economy of Boxing and Slavery

Gerald Horne is Moores Professor of History & African American Studies at the University of Houston. He is the author of more than three dozen books including White Supremacy Confronted: US Imperialism & Anticommunism vs the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela, The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, and White Supremacy and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean.

[video:https://youtu.be/qi5PkG1atUc]

Boxing, as the historian Gerald Horne argues in his engaging and meticulously researched book, “The Bittersweet Science: Racism, Racketeering, and the Political Economy of Boxing,” was effectively weaponized by Blacks in the battle against white supremacy. It was vital in demolishing the ugly stereotypes and myths propagated by the white majority about Blacks. Johnson, perhaps the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time, was as eloquent and uncompromising as he was tactically brilliant in the ring. And when he could not be defeated, the white ruling class hounded and persecuted him, as they would do decades later with Du Bois, by perverting the law to banish him from the sport and drive him into exile.

Boxing was, as Horne notes, “in many ways the ne plus ultra of capitalism itself, the essence of its unavoidable accoutrements: white supremacy, masculinity, violence, profiteering, corruption.”

Boxing matches were a common diversion for white slaveholders. Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass write of witnessing boxing matches arranged by slaveholders, “not only as entertainment for themselves,” Horne writes, “but also as a way to encourage divisions and rancor among captives.”

Continue reading:

Battling White Supremacy in the Ring by Chris Hedges

Trivia Q related to this topic ... [Submitted by JCWeb on Sat, 02/06/2021

What action that had the unanimous support of the Congressional Black Caucus did President Trump take that President Obama refused to take?

A: A posthumous pardon for Jack Johnson, first black HW Champion of the World.

Here's a link to a Grammy-award winning documentary based on the excellent biography entitled Unforgivable Blackness, by Geoffrey Ward, directed by Ken Burns

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Lookout's picture

I've enjoyed getting to know him through his interviews with Aaron and others.

Jack Johnson drove the racists crazy...

At the height of his career, the outspoken Johnson was excoriated by the press for his flashy lifestyle and for having twice married white women. He further offended white supremacists in 1910 by knocking out former champion James J. Jeffries, who had been induced to come out of retirement as a “Great White Hope.” The Johnson-Jeffries bout, which was billed as the “Fight of the Century,” led to nationwide celebrations by African Americans that were occasionally met by violence from whites, resulting in more than 20 deaths across the country.
In 1913 Johnson was convicted of violating the Mann Act by transporting a white woman—Lucille Cameron, his wife-to-be—across state lines for “immoral purposes.” He was sentenced to a year in prison and was released on bond, pending appeal. Disguised as a member of a black baseball team, he fled to Canada; he then made his way to Europe and was a fugitive for seven years.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

QMS's picture

@Lookout

wouldn't let Jack Johnson on board
"this ship don't haul no coal"
Fare thee well

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mhagle's picture

The theme is different. https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/540/our-great-reckoning It's a long interview, but worth it. She says that human supremacy is at the root of the problem.

The Sun Interview

Our Great Reckoning


Eileen Crist On The Consequences Of Human Plunder
By Leath Tonino • December 2020

Eileen Crist knows more than a person should, more than seems healthy, about dying birds and dying watersheds. She’s keenly aware of the global crisis of biodiversity loss and ecological collapse, and she sees what’s driving it: direct causes like climate change and what she calls the “ultimate causes” — population growth, overconsumption, and technological power. But the thing that really interests Crist, the thing that she’s been studying and publicizing for the past three decades as a professor and radical environmental thinker, is an even deeper question: Why is so little being done to address this planetary emergency?

She attempts, with a mix of intellectual rigor and lyrical passion, to provide an answer in her 2019 book, Abundant Earth: Toward an Ecological Civilization. The cause of our inaction, she says, is “human supremacy,” a largely unconscious belief that Homo sapiens are the masters of creation rather than just one humble species among millions. This worldview sanctions not only factory farming, clear-cut logging, mountaintop-removal mining, and bottom-trawl fishing, but also more commonplace behaviors such as cruising along in cars that slaughter wildlife and emit carbon dioxide. As long as human supremacy prevails, Crist writes, “humanity will remain unable to muster the will to scale down and pull back the burgeoning human enterprise that is unraveling Earth’s biological wealth.”

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@mhagle It's become a Woke buzzword that sets me off every time I hear it.

Ayn Rand had a point about the "Gospel of Envy" - and I think Nietzsche's observation about "slave morality" was spot-on. If you set it up so that "Power" is the Postmodern "Satan", then that's pathological beyond words.

[[I tried to insert Monty Python's "Complaints about complaints" sketch/segue here, but darn it if I can't find a copy of it online anymore]]

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Cassiodorus's picture

Kim Stanley Robinson -- The Ministry for the Future

Margaret Atwood -- The Testaments

Joan Slonczewski -- A Door Into Ocean

Andreas Malm -- Corona Climate Chronic Emergency

Carl Boggs -- Facing Catastrophe

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“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon

Raggedy Ann's picture

Gerald Horne is awesome. Thanks for bringing his work to c99.

Enjoy the day! Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

enhydra lutris's picture

censorship in the US and muy backlog of journals/magazines. Sounds like a wonderful book, though I doubt I'll ever get to it.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

What action that had the unanimous support of the Congressional Black Caucus did President Trump take that President Obama refused to take?

A: A posthumous pardon for Jack Johnson, first black HW Champion of the World.

Here's a link to a Grammy-award winning documentary based on the excellent biography entitled Unforgivable Blackness, by Geoffrey Ward, directed by Ken Burns: https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/unforgivable-blackness

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4 users have voted.