More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States

by Imani Perry

Overview

Perry argues that racism in America has moved into a new phase—post-intentional

For a nation that often optimistically claims to be post-racial, we are still mired in the practices of racial inequality that plays out in law, policy, and in our local communities. One of two explanations is often given for this persistent phenomenon: On the one hand, we might be hypocritical—saying one thing, and doing or believing another; on the other, it might have little to do with us individually but rather be inherent to the structure of American society.

More Beautiful and More Terrible compels us to think beyond this insufficient dichotomy in order to see how racial inequality is perpetuated. Imani Perry asserts that the U.S. is in a new and distinct phase of racism that is “post-intentional”: neither based on the intentional discrimination of the past, nor drawing upon biological concepts of race. Drawing upon the insights and tools of critical race theory, social policy, law, sociology and cultural studies, she demonstrates how post-intentional racism works and maintains that it cannot be addressed solely through the kinds of structural solutions of the Left or the values arguments of the Right. Rather, the author identifies a place in the middle—a space of “righteous hope”—and articulates a notion of ethics and human agency that will allow us to expand and amplify that hope.

To paraphrase James Baldwin, when talking about race, it is both more terrible than most think, but also more beautiful than most can imagine, with limitless and open-ended possibility. Perry leads readers down the path of imagining the possible and points to the way forward.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814767375
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2011
Pages:	263
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Imani Perry is Professor at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. She holds a Ph.D. in American Civilization and a J.D. both from Harvard and is the author of Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Preface xiii

Introduction 1

1 "It Wasn't Me!" 13

Post-Intent and Correlational Racism

2 It's All of Us 23

The Practice of Inequality

3 Telling Tales Out of School 43

The Work of Racial Narratives

4 The House That Jack Built 63

Inequality via Category

5 "I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watchin' Me" 85

The Racing of Privacy, Voyeurism, and Surveillance

6 Exceptionally Yours 127

Racial Escape Hatches in the Contemporary United States

7 Black Taxes and White Wages 162

The Social Economy of Race

Conclusion 183

Remediation, or from Proof to Possibility

Notes 209

Index 241

About the Author 248

Editorial Reviews

"Perry offers an insightful 'third way' analysis...the book...is a good fit for cutting-edge graduate and faculty research."

Choice - M. Christian

"[Perry] offers provocative essays exploring various aspects of the societal contradictions between continuing racial inequalities and public professions of equality...Perry provides probing and original analyses of racial narratives such as the 'acting white' narrative that numerous prominent Americans, white and black, have periodically emphasized."

Contemporary Sociology

"Imani Perry has done it again. With an uncanny ability to merge art, law, social science, and cultural studies, she weaves a powerful analysis of race in contemporary America."

Patricia Hill Collins

Imani Perry has done it again. With an uncanny ability to merge art, law, social science, and cultural studies, she weaves a powerful analysis of race in contemporary America.”

-Patricia Hill Collins,author of Another Kind of Public Education


"Perry offers an insightful 'third way' analysis...the book...is a good fit for cutting-edge graduate and faculty research."-M. Christian,Choice

"[Perry] offers provocative essays exploring various aspects of the societal contradictions between continuing racial inequalities and public professions of equality...Perry provides probing and original analyses of racial narratives such as the 'acting white' narrative that numerous prominent Americans, white and black, have periodically emphasized."-Contemporary Sociology

From the Publisher