University Press of America
Pages: 560
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-0-7618-4329-0 • Hardback • May 2009 • $154.00 • (£119.00)
978-0-7618-4330-6 • Paperback • May 2009 • $93.99 • (£72.00)
978-0-7618-4331-3 • eBook • February 2009 • $89.00 • (£68.00)
Dr. Kenneth Addison is a professor in the Educational Foundations program at Northeastern Illinois University. As a faculty member in the Educational Foundations program he both coordinates and teaches courses that serve as the philosophical, historical, anthropological, sociological, and psychological foundations of American education.
Part 1 Part One: The Architecture of Hegemony: Western Ascension, Race, and World Dominance
Chapter 2 1. Philosophy: Western Culture's Rosetta Stone
Chapter 3 2. Eurocentrism: The Metaphysics of Western Hegemony
Chapter 4 3. Imperialism: A Teleological Analysis of Western Ascension
Chapter 5 4. Racism: Cornerstone of American Privilege
Part 6 Part Two: A Pyramid of Privilege: The Structure of American Inequality
Chapter 7 5. Slavery: The Bedrock of English Colonial Privilege
Chapter 8 6. The Constitution: A Guarantor of Property Rights and a Blueprint for Racial Inequality
Chapter 9 7. Black Labor/ White Wealth: Slavery's Role in Constructing America's Pyramid of Privilege
Chapter 10 8. Black Observations from the Shadow of the Pyramid
With rigorous historical analysis that excavates the centrality of white supremacy to institutions and beliefs that constitute the very core of the United States, We Hold These Truths offers fresh insights into the complexity of contemporary debates surrounding race and power. Readers will be moved to think, and more importantly to act, by Addison's evocative writing, detailed analysis and striking imagery. An iconoclastic text, We Hold These Truths is a must-read for students invested in economic, gender and racial justice, across the disciplines.
— Dr. Erica Meiners, author of Right to be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies and co-author of Disruptive Readings on Making
Dr. Addison's analysis of the roots of racism in the U.S. on one level is an exploration and documentation of the underpinnings of the thinking that underlies colonial avarice and acquisition and its accompanying, ongoing, rationalizing/ authorizing / legitimizing/ ideology. On another level, it is an exposé - a portrait of Americans in stark contradiction with themselves: clinging to the mythic narrative of "liberty, equality, justice for all" while surrounded by the "toxic air of indifference and racism" aimed at those at the bottom of the well, as Addison puts it, following Derrick Bell, "cast aside like so much 'refuse'".
— Dr. Thomas Kochman, author of Rappin' and Stylin' Out: Communication in Urban Black America, Black and White Styles in Conflict and co-author of the