Haiti -- The Aftershocks of History by Laurent Dubois by Metropolitan Books, $32, 434 pages, ASIN #0805093354. Index, notes, no bibliography or illustrations.
A little more than two centuries ago, "Haiti became the first and only country in the world to stage a successful slave revolution," writes historian Laurent Dubois. "This immediately triggered external outrage from the small Caribbean nations surrounding colonial powers that feared other territories would follow Haiti's example. The former French rulers forced Haiti to pay a crushing indemnity -- some $3 billion in today's currency -- to compensate the former slaveholders for their losses. This set up a cycle of debt that has lasted to this day." Such is the kind of eye-opening observation that Dubois uses to explain why Haiti today retains such stereotypes as the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, the land of voodoo, and a state of eternal chaos. Among the author's insights are that Haiti had a successful economy in the 19th century, with many people immigrating there, with the trend reversing only following a 20-year occupation by the U.S. in the 20th century. Laurent Dubois teaches history at Duke University and has written another book about Haiti and magazine pieces about it for major newspapers and magazines.
The Persistence of the Color Line -- Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency, by Randall Kennedy, Pantheon '11, $26.95, 322 pages, ASIN #030737789X. Index, notes, no bibliography or illustrations.
In 1903, Harvard sociologist W.E.B. DuBois wrote in The Souls of Black Folk that "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." We're now deep enough into the Twenty-First Century that it's possible to credibly deduce that the color-line will continue to be one of major forces determining America's future in this century. In his new book, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy draws "a keen and shrewd analysis of the complex relationship between the first black president and his African-American constituency." Among issues he deals with are the nature of racial opposition to Obama, how he presents himself to blacks as opposed to whites, electoral politics and cultural chauvinism, and whether the President has "a singular responsibility to African Americans." Randall Kennedy was a Rhodes Scholar and former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He has written several other books on racial issues.
