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Race and Retail: Consumption across the Color Line
by John W. Heaton Azure B. Thompson Stacey A. Sutton Johana Londoño Anne-Marie G. Hakstian Erualdo R. González Jerome D. Williams Geraldine Rosa Henderson Siobhan Carter-David Professor Ann Fabian Sharese N. Porter Traci Parker Ellen D. Wu Bridget Kenny Neiset Bayouth Melissa L. Cooper Naa Oyo Kwate Sophia R. Evett Geraldo L. Cadava Professor Mia BayRace has long shaped shopping experiences for many Americans. Retail exchanges and establishments have made headlines as flashpoints for conflict not only between blacks and whites, but also between whites, Mexicans, Asian Americans, and a wide variety of other ethnic groups, who have at times found themselves unwelcome at white-owned businesses. Race and Retail documents the extent to which retail establishments, both past and present, have often catered to specific ethnic and racial groups. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the original essays collected here explore selling and buying practices of nonwhite populations around the world and the barriers that shape these habits, such as racial discrimination, food deserts, and gentrification. The contributors highlight more contemporary issues by raising questions about how race informs business owners' ideas about consumer demand, resulting in substandard quality and higher prices for minorities than in predominantly white neighborhoods. In a wide-ranging exploration of the subject, they also address revitalization and gentrification in South Korean and Latino neighborhoods in California, Arab and Turkish coffeehouses and hookah lounges in South Paterson, New Jersey, and tourist capoeira consumption in Brazil. Race and Retail illuminates the complex play of forces at work in racialized retail markets and the everyday impact of those forces on minority consumers. The essays demonstrate how past practice remains in force in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
Race and Reunion
by David W. BlightNo historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion. In 1865, confronted with a ravaged landscape and a torn America, the North and South began a slow and painful process of reconciliation. The ensuing decades witnessed the triumph of a culture of reunion, which downplayed sectional division and emphasized the heroics of a battle between noble men of the Blue and the Gray. Nearly lost in national culture were the moral crusades over slavery that ignited the war, the presence and participation of African Americans throughout the war, and the promise of emancipation that emerged from the war. "Race and Reunion" is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial. Blight's sweeping narrative of triumph and tragedy, romance and realism, is a compelling tale of the politics of memory, of how a nation healed from civil war without justice. By the early twentieth century, the problems of race and reunion were locked in mutual dependence, a painful legacy that continues to haunt us today.
Race and Revolution
by Gary B. NashRace and Revolution is a trenchant study of the revolutionary generation's early efforts to right the apparent contradiction of slavery and of their ultimate compromises that not only left the institution intact, but provided it with the protection of a vastly strengthened government after 1788. Race and Revolution describes the free black community's response to this failure of the revolution's promise, its vigorous and articulate pleas for justice, and the community's successes in building its own African-American institutions within the hostile environment of early nineteenth-century America.
Race and Rhyme: Rereading the New Testament
by Love Lazarus SechrestA leading womanist biblical scholar reads passages from the New Testament in dialogue with modern-day issues of racial justice. The narratives and letters of the New Testament emerged from a particular set of historical contexts that differ from today&’s, but they resonate with us because of how the issues they raise &“rhyme&” with subjects of contemporary relevance. Listening for these echoes of the present in the past, Love Sechrest utilizes her cultural experience and her perspective as a Black woman scholar to reassess passages in the New Testament that deal with intergroup conflict, ethnoracial tension, and power dynamics between dominant and minoritized groups. After providing an overview of womanist biblical interpretation and related terminology, Sechrest utilizes an approach she calls &“associative hermeneutics&” to place select New Testament texts in dialogue with modern-day issues of racial justice. Topics include:antiracist allyship and Jesus&’s interaction with marginalized individuals in the Gospel of Matthewcultural assimilation and Jesus&’s teachings about family and acceptance in the Gospel of Lukegendered stereotypes and the story of the Samaritan woman in the Gospel of Johnthe experience of Black women and girls in the American criminal justice system and the woman accused of adultery in the Gospel of Johngroup identity and the incorporation of Gentiles into the early Jesus movement in Actsprivilege and Paul&’s claims to apostolic authority in 2 Corinthianscoalition-building between diverse groups and the discussion of unity in Ephesiansgovernment&’s role in providing social welfare and early Christians&’ relationship to the Roman Empire in Romans and RevelationThrough these creative and illuminating connections, Sechrest offers a rich bounty of new insights from Scripture—drawing out matters of justice and human dignity that spoke to early Christians and can speak still to Christians willing to listen today.
Race and Role: The Mixed-Race Asian Experience in American Drama
by Rena M. HeinrichMixed-race Asian American plays are often overlooked for their failure to fit smoothly into static racial categories, rendering mixed-race drama inconsequential in conversations about race and performance. Since the nineteenth century, however, these plays have long advocated for the social significance of multiracial Asian people. Race and Role: The Mixed-Race Experience in American Drama traces the shifting identities of multiracial Asian figures in theater from the late-nineteenth century to the present day and explores the ways that mixed-race Asian identity transforms our understanding of race. Mixed-Asian playwrights harness theater’s generative power to enact performances of “double liminality” and expose the absurd tenacity with which society clings to a tenuous racial scaffolding.
Race and Secularism in America (Religion, Culture, and Public Life #30)
by Jonathon S. Kahn Vincent W. LloydThis anthology draws bold comparisons between secularist strategies to contain, privatize, and discipline religion and the treatment of racialized subjects by the American state. Specializing in history, literature, anthropology, theology, religious studies, and political theory, contributors expose secularism's prohibitive practices in all facets of American society and suggest opportunities for change.
Race and Social Work: A guide to training
by V Coombe A LittleFirst published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Race and Society
by Tina G. PatelRace and Society is a thoughtful and critically engaging exploration of some of the key issues around race and racialisation, which have arisen in what is considered to be a highly diverse and complex society. With a progressive approach emphasising the social construction of race issues within a post-racial era, moving away from essentialist and polarized explanations of raced interaction, Tina Patel: Introduces the main concepts and key theories, including their post-developments. Focuses on the processes and impact of racial categorisation in contemporary society. Highlights the intersectional and multifaceted nature of race and related conceptualizations. Illustrates how race has morphed into newer forms of categorizations. Is packed with topical examples and international case studies to engage students, along with chapter summaries, study questions and further reading. Race and Society is a highly readable and thought-provoking guide to the study of race and racialisation processes for students of sociology, criminology and related disciplines.
Race and Society: The Essentials
by Kathleen J. FitzgeraldRace and Society: The Essentials explains the basic theories and concepts related to the sociology of race and ethnicity, covering topics such as prejudice and discrimination, immigration and assimilation, structural and institutional racism, privilege, intersectionality, color blind-racism, interracial relationships, multiracial families, biracial/multiracial identities, and indigeneity. It is designed to provide a foundation for students so they can have productive and necessary discussions about race, racism, and privilege and understand how to move towards a more racially just society. Unlike many texts for this course, it does not contain chapters on individual racial and ethnic minorities or on race within the context of social institutions. Perfect for instructors who assign other kinds of materials for their race/ethnicity courses (research monographs, journals articles, published anthologies, scholarly and trade books), or for shorter courses, this text will provide students with a solid theoretical and conceptual grounding in the field.
Race and Society: The Essentials
by Kathleen J. FitzgeraldRace and Society: The Essentials explains the basic theories and concepts related to the sociology of race and ethnicity, covering topics such as prejudice and discrimination, immigration and assimilation, structural and institutional racism, privilege, intersectionality, color blind-racism, interracial relationships, multiracial families, biracial/multiracial identities, and indigeneity. It is designed to provide a foundation for students so they can have productive and necessary discussions about race, racism, and privilege and understand how to move towards a more racially just society. Unlike many texts for this course, it does not contain chapters on individual racial and ethnic minorities or on race within the context of social institutions. Perfect for instructors who assign other kinds of materials for their race/ethnicity courses (research monographs, journals articles, published anthologies, scholarly and trade books), or for shorter courses, this text will provide students with a solid theoretical and conceptual grounding in the field.
Race and Sport: The Struggle for Equality on and off the Field (Chancellor Porter L. Fortune Symposium in Southern History Series)
by Charles K. RossEven before the desegregation of the military and public education and before blacks had full legal access to voting, racial barriers had begun to fall in American sports. This collection of essays shows that for many African Americans it was the world of athletics that first opened an avenue to equality and democratic involvement. Race and Sport showcases African Americans as key figures making football, baseball, basketball, and boxing internationally popular, though inequalities still exist today. Among the early notables discussed is Fritz Pollard, an African American who played professional football before the National Football League established a controversial color barrier. Another, the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, exemplifies the black American athlete as an international celebrity. African American women also played an important role in bringing down the barriers, especially in the early development of women's basketball. In baseball, both African American and Hispanic players faced down obstacles and entered the sports mainstream after World War II. One essay discusses the international spread of American imperialism through sport. Another shows how mass media images of African American athletes continue to shape public perceptions. Although each of these six essays explores a different facet of sports in America, together they comprise an analytical examination of African American society's tumultuous struggle for full participation both on and off the athletic field.
Race and Suicide in South Africa (Routledge Library Editions: South Africa #14)
by Fatima MeerOriginally published in 1976 Race and Suicide in South Africa synthesises the two dimensions of suicide: the personal and the social phenomenon. Its approach is Durkheimian in the use of court records, and phenomenological in the examination of actual cases. About 1500 cases of suicide in Durban from 1940-70 are analysed in terms of race, sex, occupation, marital status, economic status, family type and size, residential area, time and method used. What emerges is a revealing picture of suicide in South African ethnic groups. The findings confute the idea of Durkheim and others that behaviour in suicide conforms to certain universal principles and suggest the crucial role of particular social conditions in determining suicide trends, while at the same time challenging the proposition that a high suicide rate is associated with high status. Instead the author found that there were common emotional syndromes among suicides, but there were contributed to by different social factors.
Race and the Animated Bodyscape: Constructing and Ascribing a Racialized Asian Identity in Avatar and Korra
by Francis M. AgnoliRace does not exist in animation—it must instead be constructed and ascribed. Yet, over the past few years, there has been growing discourse on the intersection of these two subjects within both academic and popular circles. In Race and the Animated Bodyscape: Constructing and Ascribing a Racialized Asian Identity in "Avatar" and "Korra," author Francis M. Agnoli introduces and illustrates the concept of the animated bodyscape, looking specifically at the US television series Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel, The Legend of Korra.Rather than consider animated figures as unified wholes, Agnoli views them as complexes of signs, made up of visual, aural, and narrative components that complement, contradict, and otherwise interact with each other in the creation of meaning. Every one of these components matters, as they are each the result of a series of creative decisions made by various personnel across different production processes. This volume (re)constructs production narratives for Avatar and Korra using original and preexisting interviews with cast and crew members as well as behind-the-scenes material. Each chapter addresses how different types of components were generated, tracing their development from preliminary research to final animation. In doing so, this project identifies the interlocking sets of production communities behind the making of animation and thus behind the making of racialized identities.Due to its illusory and constructed nature, animation affords untapped opportunities to approach the topic of race in media, looking beyond the role of the actor and taking into account the various factors and processes behind the production of racialized performances. The analysis of race and animation calls for a holistic approach, one that treats both the visual and the aural as intimately connected. This volume offers a blueprint for how to approach the analysis of race and animation.
Race and the Black Male Subculture
by William T. HostonThis book is a study of black masculinity in the twenty-first century. Through a series of critical and interdisciplinary essays, this work examines the image of the black male in American society as a Toby Waller stereotype. Toby Waller is the fictional, yet symbolic character from Alex Haley's highly acclaimed book and mini-series, Roots. It is a richly detailed, fictional story about slavery and one enslaved African man's struggle to regain freedom. The parallel of the life of enslaved Toby Waller is similar to present day black males. Both are individuals who are often stripped of their cultural identity and exist within an institutional and systemic framework that devalues black male life. This dichotomy is the historical platform to discuss how those in the annals of white America demarcate which embodiment merits inclusion into societal acceptance.
Race and the Brazilian Body: Blackness, Whiteness, and Everyday Language in Rio de Janeiro
by Jennifer Roth-GordonBased on spontaneous conversations of shantytown youth hanging out on the streets of their neighborhoods and interviews from the comfortable living rooms of the middle class, Jennifer Roth-Gordon shows how racial ideas permeate the daily lives of Rio de Janeiro’s residents across race and class lines. Race and the Brazilian Body weaves together the experiences of these two groups to explore what the author calls Brazil’s “comfortable racial contradiction,” where embedded structural racism that privileges whiteness exists alongside a deeply held pride in the country’s history of racial mixture and lack of overt racial conflict. This linguistic and ethnographic account describes how cariocas (people who live in Rio de Janeiro) “read” the body for racial signs. The amount of whiteness or blackness a body displays is determined not only through observations of phenotypical features—including skin color, hair texture, and facial features—but also through careful attention paid to cultural and linguistic practices, including the use of nonstandard speech commonly described as gíria (slang). Vivid scenes from daily interactions illustrate how implicit social and racial imperatives encourage individuals to invest in and display whiteness (by demonstrating a “good appearance”), avoid blackness (a preference challenged by rappers and hip-hop fans), and “be cordial” (by not noticing racial differences). Roth-Gordon suggests that it is through this unspoken racial etiquette that Rio residents determine who belongs on the world famous beaches of Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leblon; who deserves to shop in privatized, carefully guarded, air conditioned shopping malls; and who merits the rights of citizenship.
Race and the Colour-Line: Boundaries of Europeanness in Poland (Studies in Migration and Diaspora)
by Bolaji BalogunRace and the Colour-Line addresses the foundational ideas about race and colonialism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and reconnects them to the global manifestations that influenced them. Focusing on race and colonialism, this book indicates a shift in the global racial discourse – an understanding of the specificity of Polish racism that can transform and add to our understandings of race in the West. Drawing on archival resources – manuscripts, documents, and records – from Poland and other parts of Europe, the book offers a compelling theoretical and historical context of race-making in the so-called ‘peripheral sphere’, whilst outlining the ways in which race and colonialism have been framed specifically within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and its empire in the Atlantic world. Following a race-conscious social analysis, the significance and originality of this work lie in tracing the specificity of Blackness in Europe, and the very particular, but often neglected case of Black people in Central and Eastern Europe. To chart all this commendably, premised on critical race studies, the author uniquely explores the everyday racialized experiences of people of colour from Sub-Saharan African descent living in contemporary Poland and brings to the fore the obscurities of race and racism in the country. Through ethnographic research, the author shows how these particular people perform multiple identities in their daily lives as part of the configuration of a racially complex society. The demonstration of the ‘globality of racism’ in this book examines the phenomenon of race beyond its usual context in the West, and as such will appeal to scholars from a range of disciplines including Sociology, Geography, Anthropology, Postcolonial, Polish, and Slavic Studies.
Race and the Crisis of Humanism
by Kay AndersonThe idea that humankind constituted a unity, albeit at different stages of 'development', was in the 19th century challenged with a new way of thinking. The 'savagery' of certain races was no longer regarded as a stage in their progress towards 'civilisation', but as their permanent state. What caused this shift? In Kay Anderson's provocative new account, she argues that British colonial encounters in Australia from the late 1700s with the apparently unimproved condition of the Australian Aborigine, viewed against an understanding of 'humanity' of the time (that is, as characterised by separation from nature), precipitated a crisis in existing ideas of what it meant to be human. This lucid, intelligent and persuasive argument will be necessary reading for all scholars and upper-level students interested in the history and theories of 'race', critical human geography, anthropology, and Australian and environmental studies.
Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things
by Ann Laura StolerMichel Foucault's History of Sexuality has been one of the most influential books of the last two decades. It has had an enormous impact on cultural studies and work across many disciplines on gender, sexuality, and the body. Bringing a new set of questions to this key work, Ann Laura Stoler examines volume one of History of Sexuality in an unexplored light. She asks why there has been such a muted engagement with this work among students of colonialism for whom issues of sexuality and power are so essential. Why is the colonial context absent from Foucault's history of a European sexual discourse that for him defined the bourgeois self? In Race and the Education of Desire, Stoler challenges Foucault's tunnel vision of the West and his marginalization of empire. She also argues that this first volume of History of Sexuality contains a suggestive if not studied treatment of race.Drawing on Foucault's little-known 1976 College de France lectures, Stoler addresses his treatment of the relationship between biopower, bourgeois sexuality, and what he identified as "racisms of the state." In this critical and historically grounded analysis based on cultural theory and her own extensive research in Dutch and French colonial archives, Stoler suggests how Foucault's insights have in the past constrained--and in the future may help shape--the ways we trace the genealogies of race.Race and the Education of Desire will revise current notions of the connections between European and colonial historiography and between the European bourgeois order and the colonial treatment of sexuality. Arguing that a history of European nineteenth-century sexuality must also be a history of race, it will change the way we think about Foucault.
Race and the Making of the Mormon People
by Max Perry MuellerThe nineteenth-century history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Max Perry Mueller argues, illuminates the role that religion played in forming the notion of three "original" American races—red, black, and white—for Mormons and others in the early American Republic. Recovering the voices of a handful of black and Native American Mormons who resolutely wrote themselves into the Mormon archive, Mueller threads together historical experience and Mormon scriptural interpretations. He finds that the Book of Mormon is key to understanding how early followers reflected but also departed from antebellum conceptions of race as biblically and biologically predetermined. Mormon theology and policy both challenged and reaffirmed the essentialist nature of the racialized American experience. The Book of Mormon presented its believers with a radical worldview, proclaiming that all schisms within the human family were anathematic to God's design. That said, church founders were not racial egalitarians. They promoted whiteness as an aspirational racial identity that nonwhites could achieve through conversion to Mormonism. Mueller also shows how, on a broader level, scripture and history may become mutually constituted. For the Mormons, that process shaped a religious movement in perpetual tension between its racialist and universalist impulses during an era before the concept of race was secularized.
Race and the Obama Phenomenon: The Vision of a More Perfect Multiracial Union
by G. Reginald Daniel and Hettie V. WilliamsThe concept of a more perfect union remains a constant theme in the political rhetoric of Barack Obama. From his now historic race speech to his second victory speech delivered on November 7, 2012, that striving is evident. “Tonight, more than two hundred years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward,” stated the forty-fourth president of the United States upon securing a second term in office after a hard-fought political contest. Obama borrows this rhetoric from the founding documents of the United States set forth in the US Constitution and in Abraham Lincoln's “Gettysburg Address.” How naive or realistic is Obama's vision of a more perfect American union that brings together people across racial, class, and political lines? How can this vision of a more inclusive America be realized in a society that remains racist at its core? These essays seek answers to these complicated questions by examining the 2008 and 2012 elections as well as the events of President Obama's first term. Written by preeminent race scholars from multiple disciplines, the volume brings together competing perspectives on race, gender, and the historic significance of Obama's election and reelection. The president heralded in his November 2012, acceptance speech, “The idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you look like . . . . whether you're black or white, Hispanic or Asian or Native American.” These essayists argue the truth of that statement and assess whether America has made any progress toward that vision.
Race and the Origins of American Neoliberalism (Routledge Research in Race and Ethnicity #12)
by Randolph HohleWhy did the United States forsake its support for public works projects, public schools, public spaces, and high corporate taxes for the neoliberal project that uses the state to benefit businesses at the expense of citizens? The short answer to this question is race. This book argues that the white response to the black civil rights movement in the 1950s, '60s, and early '70s inadvertently created the conditions for emergence of American neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is the result of an unlikely alliance of an elite liberal business class and local segregationists that sought to preserve white privilege in the civil rights era. The white response drew from a language of neoliberalism, as they turned inward to redefine what it meant to be a good white citizen. The language of neoliberalism depoliticized class tensions by getting whites to identify as white first, and as part of a social class second. This book explores the four pillars of neoliberal policy, austerity, privatization, deregulation, and tax cuts, and explains how race created the pretext for the activation of neoliberal policy. Neoliberalism is not about free markets. It is about controlling the state to protect elite white economic privileges.
Race and the Politics of Deception: The Making of an American City
by null Christopher MeleWhat is the relationship between race and space, and how do racial politics inform the organization and development of urban locales?In Race and the Politics of Deception, Christopher Mele unpacks America’s history of dealing with racial problems through the inequitable use of public space. Mele focuses on Chester, Pennsylvania—a small city comprised of primarily low-income, black residents, roughly twenty miles south of Philadelphia. Like many cities throughout the United States, Chester is experiencing post-industrial decline. A development plan touted as a way to “save” the city, proposes to turn one section into a desirable waterfront destination, while leaving the rest of the struggling residents in fractured communities. Dividing the city into spaces of tourism and consumption versus the everyday spaces of low-income residents, Mele argues, segregates the community by creating a racialized divide. While these development plans are described as socially inclusive and economically revitalizing, Mele asserts that political leaders and real estate developers intentionally exclude certain types of people—most often, low-income people of color.Race and the Politics of Deception provides a revealing look at how our ever-changing landscape is being strategically divided along lines of class and race.
Race and the Politics of the Exception: Equality, Sovereignty, and American Democracy (Routledge Series on Identity Politics)
by Utz McKnightThe traditional assumption today about race is that it is not political; that it has no political content and is a matter of individual beliefs and attitudes. In Race and the Politics of the Exception, Utz McKnight argues that race is in fact political and defines how it functions as a politics in the United States. McKnight organizes his book into three sections, beginning with a theoretical section about racial politics in the United States. Using theorists such as Benjamin, Agamben, and Schmitt, McKnight discusses how the idea of racial communities went from being constituted through the idea of racial sovereignty and a politics of the exception that defined blacks as the internal enemy, to being constitutionally defined through the institutions of racial equal opportunity. In the second section, McKnight further develops his critical race theory by exploring in more detail the social use of race today. The election of President Obama has brought the politics of racial equality to a critical point. In spite of a very powerful set of political tools to define it as a thing of the past, race matters. In the final section, McKnight engages with important African American fiction from each of the three major periods of racial politics in the US. Earlier descriptions of political theory are used throughout these analyses to refine the argument for a new critical politics of race. Scholars of political theory, identity politics, African American studies, and American Studies will find this work ground-breaking and relevant.
Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform
by Joe Soss Sanford Schram Richard C. FordingIt's hard to imagine discussing welfare policy without discussing race, yet all too often this uncomfortable factor is avoided or simply ignored. Sometimes the relationship between welfare and race is treated as so self-evident as to need no further attention; equally often, race in the context of welfare is glossed over, lest it raise hard questions about racism in American society as a whole. Either way, ducking the issue misrepresents the facts and misleads the public and policy-makers alike. Many scholars have addressed specific aspects of this subject, but until now there has been no single integrated overview. Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform is designed to fill this need and provide a forum for a range of voices and perspectives that reaffirm the key role race has played--and continues to play--in our approach to poverty. The essays collected here offer a systematic, step-by-step approach to the issue. Part 1 traces the evolution of welfare from the 1930s to the sweeping Clinton-era reforms, providing a historical context within which to consider today's attitudes and strategies. Part 2 looks at media representation and public perception, observing, for instance, that although blacks accounted for only about one-third of America's poor from 1967 to 1992, they featured in nearly two-thirds of news stories on poverty, a bias inevitably reflected in public attitudes. Part 3 discusses public discourse, asking questions like "Whose voices get heard and why?" and "What does 'race' mean to different constituencies?" For although "old-fashioned" racism has been replaced by euphemism, many of the same underlying prejudices still drive welfare debates--and indeed are all the more pernicious for being unspoken. Part 4 examines policy choices and implementation, showing how even the best-intentioned reform often simply displaces institutional inequities to the individual level--bias exercised case by case but no less discriminatory in effect. Part 5 explores the effects of welfare reform and the implications of transferring policy-making to the states, where local politics and increasing use of referendum balloting introduce new, often unpredictable concerns. Finally, Frances Fox Piven's concluding commentary, "Why Welfare Is Racist," offers a provocative response to the views expressed in the pages that have gone before--intended not as a "last word" but rather as the opening argument in an ongoing, necessary, and newly envisioned national debate.
Race and the Rhetoric of Resistance
by Jeffrey B. FergusonContinuing in the vein of his ever questioning the conventions of race melodrama through the lens of which so much American racial and cultural history and storytelling has been filtered, Ferguson's final work conveys to the reader his sense of humor, warmth, and grace, while adding up to a serious, principled critique of much common scholarly and pedagogic practice..