America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-Blind Politics
Education, Incarceration, Segregation, and the Future of the U.S. Multiracial Democracy
Contributions by Houston Baker Vanderbilt University, Grace Lee Boggs, Benjamin DeMott, Erica Frankenberg, Henry Louis Gates, Andrew Grant-Thomas, Lani Guinier, Bob Herbert Distinguished Senior Fell, Maria Hinojosa, Gary Howard, Colbert I. King, Arthur Levine PhD, President, Woodrow W, Manning Marable M. Moran Weston/Black Alumni Council Professor of African-American Studies, Marc Mauer, Trinh Minh-Ha, Michael Omi, Nell Irvin Painter, Alvin F. Poussaint Harvard Medical School, john powell, John Telford, Lisa Thurau, Johanna Wald, Cornel West Union Theological Seminar, James J. Zogby Edited by Curtis L. Ivery, Joshua Bassett
Publication date:
22 August 2011Length of book:
168 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersDimensions:
241x161mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781442210998
Over 40 years ago the historic Kerner Commission Report declared that America was undergoing an urban crisis whose effects were disproportionately felt by underclass populations. In America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-blind Politics, Curtis Ivery and Joshua Bassett explore the persistence of this crisis today, despite public beliefs that America has become a "post-racial" nation after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency.
Ivery and Bassett combine their own experience in the fields of civil rights and education with the knowledge of more than 20 experts in the field of urban studies to provide an accessible overview of the theories of the urban underclass and how they affect America's urban crisis. This engaging look into the still-present racial politics in America's cities adds significantly to the existing scholarship on the urban underclass by discussing the role of the prison-industrial complex in sustaining the urban crisis as well as the importance of the concept of multiracial democracy to the future of American politics and society. America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-blind Politics encourages the reader not only to be aware of persisting racial inequalities, but to actively engage in efforts to respond to them.
Ivery and Bassett combine their own experience in the fields of civil rights and education with the knowledge of more than 20 experts in the field of urban studies to provide an accessible overview of the theories of the urban underclass and how they affect America's urban crisis. This engaging look into the still-present racial politics in America's cities adds significantly to the existing scholarship on the urban underclass by discussing the role of the prison-industrial complex in sustaining the urban crisis as well as the importance of the concept of multiracial democracy to the future of American politics and society. America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-blind Politics encourages the reader not only to be aware of persisting racial inequalities, but to actively engage in efforts to respond to them.
America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-blind Politics explains the continuity and depth of racial injustice in the US, focusing on the failures of colorblind approaches to race. After the containment of the civil rights movement, the claim of colorblindness was adopted (from Justice Harlan's dissent in Plessy), as a type of 'anti-racism lite.' But is it also 'racism lite?' In its dismissal of race, color-blind politics fails to address the system of crime and punishment, the ongoing segregation and urban inequality, and the numerous other forms of racial despotism that still operate in the United States today. Most valuable here is the authors' argument for multiracial democracy as the way forward. Highly recommended for course adoption!