Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:20:57.641Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Persistent Complexities of Race and Politics in the US

Review products

Gooding-WilliamsRobert: In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Pp. 368. $35.00.)
WalkerAnders: The Ghost of Jim Crow: How Southern Moderates Used Brown v. Board of Education to Stall Civil Rights. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. 256. $34.95.)
BassAmy: Those About Him Remained Silent: The Battle over W. E. B. Du Bois. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Pp. 232. $24.95.)

Show more reviewed productsShow more reviewed products

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2011

D. Osei Robertson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Although the United States has elected an African American president, since that election there have been numerous indicators that racism remains a persistent, and complex, issue in America. Shortly after President Obama took office, for example, renowned Harvard University professor Henry “Skip” Gates was arrested for being uncooperative with the responding officer when police mistook him for a burglar at his own home. This incident served as a small reminder of the resilient nature of racism in the United States. More importantly, there has been an increase in the number of hate groups since 2008, and the proposed plans for an Islamic cultural center near the site of the former World Trade Center have initiated a wave of anti-Islamic sentiment. Despite the hope that Barack Obama would usher in a new era in race relations, it seems as though his election has brought to the surface tensions that some people assumed had disappeared. Among scholars of black politics, race serves as the central construct. In some cases, race serves as a lens through which other variables such as class and gender are filtered. In other cases, race serves as the key independent variable explaining a number of factors that influence the lives of blacks. Each of the texts reviewed in this essay examines issues of race to varying degrees, and each one reveals the complex nature and long-lasting impact of race on American society.

Type
Review Essay
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 73 , Issue 2 , Spring 2011 , pp. 305 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Keller, Larry, “The Second Wave: Evidence Grows of Far-Right Militia Resurgence,” Intelligence Report, no. 135 (Fall 2009)Google Scholar, available at the Southern Poverty Law Center website (splcenter.org).

2 Logan, Rayford, ed., W. E. B. Du Bois: A Profile (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972)Google Scholar; Marable, Manning, W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (Boston: Twayne, 1986)Google Scholar; Lewis, David L., W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography of Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993)Google Scholar; Reed, Adolph, W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

3 See Jones, Mack, “Political Science and the Black Political Experience: Issues in Epistemology and Relevance,” National Political Science Review 3 (1992): 30Google Scholar; Mills, Charles W., Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Outlaw, Lucius T. Jr., African American Philosophers: 17Conversations, ed. Yancy, G. (New York: Routledge, 1998), chap. 15Google Scholar.

4 See Hanchard's, Michael discussion of micro- and macro-forms of political activity in Party/Politics: Horizons in Black Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 41–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Scott, James, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

6 Geuss, Raymond, Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 77Google Scholar. Also consider Vacano, Diego von, The Art of Power: Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and the Making of Aesthetic Political Theory (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007)Google Scholar.

7 Orfield, Gary and Lee, Chungmei, Why Segregation Matters: Poverty and Educational Inequality (Cambridge, MA: The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, 2005)Google Scholar.

8 Williams, Linda Faye, The Constraint of Race: Legacies of White Skin Privilege (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Brown, Michael et al. , White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

9 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, Racism Without Racists: Color Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers., 2003), 28Google Scholar.

10 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, “When Whites Love a Black Leader: Race Matters in Obamerica,” Journal of African American Studies 13 (2009): 176–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Gamble, Vanessa, “Under the Shadow of Tuskegee: African Americans and Health Care,” American Journal of Public Health 87 (1997): 1773CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

12 Kelley, Robin, Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon, 1997)Google Scholar.

13 Marcuse, Herbert, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon, 1991)Google Scholar; also Gilloch, consider Graeme, “Culture and Critique in Crisis,” in Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations (London: Polity, 2002), chap. 5Google Scholar.