Lerone Bennett Jr.’s The Shaping of Black America is an assiduous work detailing the history of African people in the United States. Beginning with a well-documented account of our first steps in the British colony, which would become the United States, up until what Bennett describes as “the central paradoxes of the political economy of blackness,” The Shaping of Black America is a must read for those who want to understand not just the shaping of so-called “Black America,” but the shaping of the United States period. Other subjects he addresses are the relationship between Africans and Indians in the chapter “Red and Black,” semi-slavery of whites in the early colonies in the chapter “White Servitude”, and much more.
Bennett succinctly delineates why Africans were brought to the United States—better said to the whole of the Americas—when he states the following:
To understand black is to understand work—and the denial of work.
It was work or, to be more precise, it was the European demand for cheap and exploitable labor that brought black people to these shores. And it was in and through the work relationship that the fundamental structures of the black community were formed. The same thing can be said about the impact of black labor on the structures of the white community. It was the work of black workers, it was the unpaid and underpaid work of black men, women, and children that changed the flora and fauna of large sections of the New World and created the initial pool of capital that made possible the economic growth from which they were excluded by fraud and violence.
To understand the black experience is to understand this. It is also to understand that leap of the spirit which enabled embattled black workers to endure slavery, peonage, and internal colonialism. (pg. 234)
We feel a more accurate title of the book would have been The Shaping of Africans in the United States, as the Americas consists of North America, Central America, South America, and The Caribbean, not just merely the United States. In addition, the term African properly denotes who we are as a historical people, with a continuity of experience as a people.
With that being said, this book is invaluable for conscientization. Note, we actually own and read the February 1, 1975 edition, there is a later edition available called The Shaping of Black America: The Struggles and Triumphs of African-Americans, 1619-1990s, published July 1, 1993. We would have liked to get the latter edition but as this book is out of print, it is extremely hard to procure for a reasonable price. That said, either edition you read, we know the information will be indispensable for your praxis.
