The New Black: What Has Changed--and What Has Not--with Race in America

by Kenneth W. Mack (Editor), Guy-Uriel Charles (Editor)

Overview

The election and reelection of Barack Obama ushered in a litany of controversial perspectives about the contemporary state of American race relations. In this incisive volume, some of the country's most celebrated and original thinkers on race—historians, sociologists, writers, scholars, and cultural critics—reexamine the familiar framework of the civil rights movement with an eye to redirecting our understanding of the politics of race.

Through provocative and insightful essays, The New Black challenges contemporary images of black families, offers a contentious critique of the relevance of presidential politics, transforms ideas about real and perceived political power, defies commonly accepted notions of "blackness," and generally attempts to sketch the new boundaries of debates over race in America.

Bringing a wealth of novel ideas and fresh perspectives to the public discourse, The New Black represents a major effort to address both persistent inequalities and the changing landscape of race in the new century.

With contributions by:

Elizabeth Alexander
Jeannine Bell
Paul Butler
Luis Fuentes-Rohwer
Lani Guinier
Jonathan Scott Holloway
Taeku Lee
Glenn C. Loury
Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Orlando Patterson
Cristina M. Rodríguez
Gerald Torres

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595586773
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	09/03/2013
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Kenneth W. Mack is a law professor at Harvard Universityand the author of Representing the Race. He has written for the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Baltimore Sun and has appeared on CNN, Anderson Cooper 360, and PBS's Frontline. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts. Guy-Uriel Charles is a law professor at Duke Universityand the founding director of the Duke Center on Law, Race, and Politics. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Preface Orlando Patterson ix

Introduction: The New Black and the Death of the Civil Rights Idea Kenneth W. Mack Guy-Uriel E. Charles 1

1 Political Race and The New Black Lani Guinier Gerald Torres 13

2 Déjà Vu All Over Again? Racial Contestation in the Obama Era Taeku Lee 34

3 Immigration and the Civil Rights Agenda Cristina M. Rodríguez 49

4 The President and the Justice: Two Ways of Looking at a Postblack Man Paul Butler 64

5 The Racial Metamorphosis of Justice Kennedy and the Future of Civil Rights Law Luis Fuentes-Rohwer 80

6 The Right Kind of Family: Silences in a Civil Rights Narrative Jonathan Scott Holloway 100

7 John Hope Franklin: The Man and His Works Orlando Patterson 118

8 The Puzzles of Racial Extremism in a "Postracial" World Jeannine Bell 131

9 An Officer and a Gentleman Angela Onwuachi-Willig 146

10 Obama Is No King: The Fracturing of the Black Prophetic Tradition Glenn C. Loury 163

11 Free Black Men Elizabeth Alexander 181

Acknowledgments 199

Contributors 201

Notes 207

Editorial Reviews

Positing that the civil rights idea “has begun to unravel,” law professors Mack (Representing the Race) and Charles offer 11 essays from scholars, writers, and cultural critics on “postracialism consequent to Obama’s election.” Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres propose the fresh concept of “political race,” consisting of “a group of people who ultimately are defined by their politics rather than by their physiognomy,” while Cristina Rodriguez questions the applicability of civil rights principles to immigration reform. Jeannine Bell addresses the “tolerance-violence paradox” as violent racism occurs “in the same space and time as... increases in racial tolerance,” while Angela Onwuachi-Willig discusses the newsworthy arrest of Henry Louis Gates. Glenn Loury argues that “Obama’s election has neither fulfilled King’s dream nor does it usher in any sort of a new era,” and that “the imperatives of office in the position of the American presidency” take Obama away from the “black prophetic tradition.” “Postracial America,” one contributor observes, “is the dream that we would prefer to believe, and the one that many would rather see depicted.” Mack and Charles have staged an eminently readable event for wrestling with that idea. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Teeming with critically important reflections on the state of race in America. . . . Whether you agree or disagree with the ideas herein, one thing is for certain: these perspectives ought not be ignored."
—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

"The New Black is an indispensable guide to thinking one's way through the peculiar institutional complexities of our supposedly postracial moment: the tensions among racial progress in some quarters, fierce backlash in others, the shifting demographics of ethnicity, the subtleties of denial and unconscious bias, and the reconfigured challenge of civil rights for all Americans."
—Patricia J. Williams, columnist at The Nation and James L. Dohr Professor of Law, Columbia University

"These insightful essays refocus our attention on race, helping to dissipate the willed delusion of a 'postracial' society. A must-read, and a fun read."
—Ian Haney Lopez, John H. Boalt Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley

"The contributors to this book raise significant questions about the continued relevance of the civil rights ideal and argue persuasively that new ideas are necessary, advancing an important discussion of the shape of race relations beyond the Obama presidency."
—Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

"An important contribution. . . . As we transform into a majority-minority nation, The New Black gives us thought-provoking inquiries and frameworks that reflect the racial realities of Americans."
—Deepa Iyer, executive director, South Asian Americans Leading Together

From the Publisher

Contemplating the current state of race in America. Since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, there have been countless discussions about the concept of a "post-racial America." Whether unduly optimistic or simply silly, this assertion had legs even as some of the most aggressive opposition to the new president came in the form of barely cloaked racial animosity. In their new essay collection, Mack (Law/Harvard Univ.; Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer, 2012) and Charles (Law/Duke Univ.), who founded the Duke Center on Law, Race, and Politics, bring together 12 scholars and writers to reflect on the "New Black." While the contributors take wide-ranging and often contradictory approaches to the issue of race in contemporary America, they all write from the perspective that "the civil rights idea," the integrationist model expressed in the classical phase of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, "no longer provides an easy way to describe, or address, America's continuing race problem." The contributors cover an array of issues, from the infamous arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, which led to the so-called "beer summit" in 2009, to the relevance of politics (including the role of Obama) and law in the world of minorities, to reconsiderations of civil rights history and questions of the failures of a binary black-white view of race relations in the U.S. The contributors, who include Elizabeth Alexander, Lani Guinier, Glenn C. Loury and others, tackle this perpetual issue in thoughtful essays that vary in quality but rarely in the seriousness of their engagement. Reveals some of the directions that questions of race and racism will take as we approach post-Obama America.

Kirkus Reviews