Announcing Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity: A Noel Ignatiev Reader

HC Editor — June 28, 2022

June 28th marks the release of the new book Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity! We are excited about this book, as it is a collection of writings by Hard Crackers founder and editor Noel Ignatiev. It spans essays from the mid sixties to his very last essay which he finished in October 2019, just weeks before he died. We are excited to have Noel’s writings available to a new generation of activists; as we ponder the political questions of the day, we can look for inspiration from Noel’s insightful writings.

Published by Verso, the book is a collaboration of HC editors Geert Dhondt, Zhandarka Kurti and Jarrod Shanahan, who edited and introduced the volume, with additional contributions from HC editor John Garvey and our friend David Roediger.

If you live in the New York area, we will have a book release event at the Word is Change Bookstore with Geert Dhondt and John Garvey on Thursday June 30th at 7pm in Brooklyn.

Advance praise for Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity:

“This book is the gift of a life well-lived—as steelworker, scholar, race traitor, and fierce anti-racist. Noel Ignatiev had a singular and memorable voice, here preserved for posterity. We will need his ideas and example moving forward.”

—Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History

“This collection of Noel Ignatiev’s writings over the past six decades could not come at a more important time in the struggle against white supremacy; they are as pertinent today as they were when they were written.”

—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

“Noel Ignatiev was a tiller in the field of identity studies long before most of us even knew there was such a field. Beyond that, he located the field at the crossroads of race and class. He was an important, innovative thinker, as well as a committed activist for social justice.”

—Russell Banks, author of Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter

“Noel Ignatiev was a giant in one of the most important fields of research to emerge in recent times: how was it that those who had been warring on the shores of Europe on religious and ethnic grounds were magically transformed upon crossing the Atlantic into the new Identity Politics of ‘whiteness’? As the brilliant Ignatiev correctly suggests, the survival of humanity may very well hang on understanding this phenomenon—then acting decisively.”

—Gerald Horne, author of White Supremacy Confronted: US Imperialism and Anti-Communism versus the Liberation of Southern Africa, from Rhodes to Mandela

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