Growing up, as my Mama's Sun and a formerly houseless student of a revolutionary school called Deecolonize Academy, I have read many books about the true history of the United States, one that until recently, wasn't eagerly taught by our country's public education system. I have heard stories time and time again of the man who discovered the place I live in today, and the many ways he tortured innocent indigenous people from all over the world. I learned about what came after, the brutal colonization of this land, and the slaves from another land that were brought here to build this civilization. However, hearing it in this fashion, with the words soaking into my brain as easily as water does into a paper towel, made it all the more easier to understand, and the different information being displayed far easier to understand than before. Mumia Abu-Jamal didn’t only tell the now widely known story of colonization and genocide, no, he went in depth in the philosophies behind the men and women who committed these atrocities. He examined these philosophies and used them to connect with the conflicts against poor people and people of color in modern day United States.
I have a wealth of political consciousness, and a lot in this book I was already aware of. However, with everything, there were some amazing teachings that I soaked up from this book, like the history of the Aryan race. The myth was that the Aryans, originating in what is now known as Iran, (Iran deriving from the word Aryan) were a blond haired, blue eyed, unusually intelligent and strongly built race of people who was a natural “civilizer” a conqueror. As time continued, the aryans made the mistake of mixing with non-whites, and creating a crossbreed that was shunned and looked upon with disgust. This is what has dominated the collective consciousness of white colonizers for millenia, one of its most famous representatives and believers being the german politician Adolf Hitler, who sought out the return of the pure race, the aryans of old.
The bastard childs of the pure aryan race were born, as the story is told, and through the ashes rose a new civilization, one advanced, conquering nation called the Teutons, or as I like to think of them, Aryan 2.0. Theodore Roosevelt, the 27th president of the USA, in a speech in 1906, stated that “ the world would have halted had it not been for the Teutonic conquests on alien lands”. The idea of the white conqueror, coming to civilize new and foreign lands with their presence is the idea that America is founded upon. The story about the Aryan race sets the foundation for the reasoning that 16th to 19th to 21st century colonizers had to rape indigenous land and people, steal their culture, and never stop. Mumia weaves these intricate and in-depth facts about history that give an interesting insight on how colonized thinking went on in the beginning, and how it continues to show its face in the modern day.