33 posts categorized "Tom DeWolf" Feed

Some of the recent controversy over Obama's nomination of Goodwin Liu is linked to remarks he made about reparations for slavery. Tom DeWolf was there, and he wants to set the record straight. Read more →


Thomas N. DeWolf is the author of Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History. Tom speaks regularly at schools, conferences, and other events around the country. For further information go... Read more →


The Shoulders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Stand On

Oregon—where I live—held its primary election on May 20. For the first time since I moved here for college in 1972, the primary actually meant something to the presidential contest. Always in the past our primary is so late in the game that the presidential candidates for both parties have already been crowned. This exceedingly white state handed a man of color an 18-point margin of victory over a woman. That same day, far across the country in Kentucky, voters there handed that same woman a 35-point victory over the man of color. Read more →


By Thomas Norman DeWolf

Slavery was the fuel that drove the entire industrial revolution and gave white people a sense of privilege, place, and entitlement that persists today. When we examine significant social indicators—wealth, infant mortality rates, the likelihood of imprisonment, homicide rates, access to housing, health care, employment, higher education, and so on—we find that blacks fall on the negative side of the dividing line. This is a legacy of slavery, and it is systemic. Read more →