Natives: Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire (Akala)

Okay, a confession: I thought about dropping the book, a couple of times. It’s not that it’s not well-written, because it is (one of the best I’ve read actually). It’s not because it isn’t relevant; it’s been relevant for the past three hundred years. No, the problem is that I’ve been reading a lot (and I do mean A LOT) about race over the past year, so when I started Akala’s book, I think I started with a few preconcieved notions about what I was getting into, and for the most part I wasn’t surprised: it’s a brilliantly-researched, honest, opinionated, and occasionally bitter read from someone who’s elevated himself out of a place where white privileged society told him he belonged. I think the problem was that I was expecting the kind of jaw-dropping revelations that Isabel Wilkerson came up with in Caste, and I’m sure that there would’ve been a few, if I’d read this one first.

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Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Best movie title ever …

You know, I’d never have believed he could pull this off a second time: the Borat character must be so well known you’d think Sacha Baron Cohen would be recognised everywhere, no matter what disguise he put on.

Anyway, assuming that the whole film isn’t a massive put-up job (and I still have my suspicions about some of the people he talks to, and the setups in general), then he not only got away with it, he’s come up with a better, more human, more sphincter-clenchingly uncomfortable film than the original.

In this ninety-odd minute documentary/drama/comedy/seriously I’m not sure what it is, our intrepid journalist finds himself released after fourteen years in a Kazakhstan prison, and offered the chance to redeem himself after embarrassing his entire nation in the first movie. He’s given one simple job: deliver a bribe to the Mayor of America so his country’s standing in the eyes of world will be restored (I have no idea what the real country of Kazakhstan makes of all this …)

Leaving Kazakstan

The plan goes to shit early on, when Borat finds the chimpanzee that he’s supposed to deliver to Donald Trump has been eaten in transit by a stowaway – his fifteen-year-old daughter, Tutar (played magnificently by newcomer Maria Bakalova). Not a problem for Borat: he’ll give the Mayor his daughter instead.

(Possible spoilers after the jump)

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