As the birthplace of the Black Panthers and a nationwide tax revolt; California embodied a crucial motif of the postwar United States: the rise of suburbs and the decline of cities; a process in which black and white histories inextricably joined. American Babylon tells this story through Oakland and its nearby suburbs; tracing both the history of civil rights and black power politics as well as the history of suburbanization and home-owner politics. Robert Self shows that racial inequities in both New Deal and Great Society liberalism precipitated local struggles over land; jobs; taxes; and race within postwar metropolitan development. Black power and the tax revolt evolved together; in tension. American Babylon demonstrates that the history of civil rights and black liberation politics in California did not follow a southern model; but represented a long-term struggle for economic rights that began during the World War II years and continued through the rise of the Black Panthers in the late 1960s. This struggle yielded a wide-ranging and profound critique of postwar metropolitan development and its foundation of class and racial segregation. Self traces the roots of the 1978 tax revolt to the 1940s; when home owners; real estate brokers; and the federal government used racial segregation and industrial property taxes to forge a middle-class lifestyle centered on property ownership. Using the East Bay as a starting point; Robert Self gives us a richly detailed; engaging narrative that uniquely integrates the most important racial liberation struggles and class politics of postwar America.
#4530364 in Books Princeton University Press 1997-12-08Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.75 x 6.25 x 1.00l; #File Name: 0691057974336 pages
Review
11 of 19 people found the following review helpful. North Korea is not CanadaBy minainseoul@hotmail.comThere are some good aspects of this book analysing the ins and outs (mostly outs) of United States policy toward North Korea and its nuclear program. But the book has one enormous drawback: it treats everything that the United States and its allies did with suspicion; while giving North Korea every benefit of the doubt. I did not understand the expression "blame America first" until I read this book. There is nothing in this book about North Korean terrorism or attacks on the South Korean Blue House. Mr. Sigal treats North Korea as if it were Canada. It is not. His good points would come through better if he was not so one-sided.8 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Track 2 and Cooperation are good for nuclear starangersBy A CustomerBias on the part of American policy-makers affected U.S. nuclear diplomacy toward North Korea. If the U.S. would not have maintained such a bias; negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea would not have been as difficult. That is the author`s main point; but what he overlooks is not an analysis of why U.S. policy-makers; from the begining of Korean War and beyond; maintained a bias; This drawback notwithstanding; the book contains many interviews and documents; and is; therefore; a historically important study.
