New Book On Slavery Attacked in Review By Major Magazine — Because It Treated Slaves As 'Victims': THE ECONOMIST Apologizes, Retracts Review

THE ECONOMIST: Economic news or bastion of white privilege and racist propaganda?

Author: The Economist Review Of My Slavery Book Was 'Blatantly Racist'

By Dylan Scott
When Cornell University professor Ed Baptist read The Economist review of his book on slavery, he knew that it would be a big deal. The review dismissed his work as "advocacy" because "all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains."

That characterization of his work, which attracted the most backlash from journalists and academics, was not entirely a surprise to Baptist, he told TPM on Friday. It is something he has heard in history circles before the reaction to his new book, "The Half Has Never Been Told."

"I thought that was silly," he said. "But I've been talking about this kind of stuff for a while in academic circles and public history circles, and it's not uncommon for people to protest that I'm not being sensitive enough to the inner lives of enslavers."

"On one level, I want to respond, 'No, actually, I think I'm being very sensitive to it and I'm just unfurling these other sides to the story that are often left under the sheets as it were,'" he continued. "The point that other people have made that I think is so effective is that for me to write a book about the exploitation of enslaved people, by definition, is going to show enslaved people as the objects of all kinds of victimizing processes and, on the other hand, enslavers as the agents of those processes."

The Economist did apologize and withdraw the review, though Baptist said he believed the magazine had only apologized for the last line on "victims" and "villains." Another bit of the review, which questioned the reliability of ex-slaves in relating experiences under slavery, struck him as "blatantly racist."

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