I’ve read Settlers, recently. Most of it i already knew, but discovering how much of the US was built by Chinese people, and then how badly they were treated afterwards, was new to me.
My issue with the book is an undertone of ‘You can’t trust whitey’ And where many people take that undertone. On some forums, i have had people [only 2 so far] tell me not-jokingly, that concentration camps, and mass extermination is fine, as long as it happens to white people. Basically, the nazis were right, they just had the wrong targets. And they cited this book as to why.
And when you bring this up, people jump to white fragility and so on, as explanations as to why you MUST be hating the book. What the book says is not new. And much of it is true.
My issue with it is that it seems to be purpose written to stop Fred Hampton. Because he wanted to unite the working class, black, brown and white. And you have people citing this book as reasons to abandon the white members of the working class to the far right, and condemn any attempts to reach them in a revolutionary context.
there are better books saying the same stuff, without the drama. https://erich-arbor.medium.com/the-anti-marxist-elitism-of-j-sakais-settlers-409ff2d496ee
It’s basically relying on their enemies to have more humanity than the colonizers. And then using it against them.