"Voter suppression has plagued America since its inception, and so has the issue of identity-who is really American and what that means. When tied together, as they are in our modern politics, citizens are harmed in overt, subtle, and even personal ways. Stacey Abrams experienced the effects firsthand, running one of the most unconventional races in modern politics as the Democratic nominee for the governorship in Georgia and the first black woman...

Black voters were critical to the Democrats' 2018 blue wave. In fact, 90 percent of Black voters supported Democratic House candidates, compared to just 53 percent of all voters. Despite media narratives, this was not a fluke. Throughout U.S. history, Black people have played a crucial role in the shaping of the American experiment. Yet still, this powerful voting bloc is often dismissed as some "amorphous" deviation, argues Tiffany Cross. Say It...

"Intellectuals and Race is a radical book in the original sense of one that goes to the root of the problem. The role of intellectuals in racial strife is explored in an international context that puts the American experience in a wholly new light. The views of individual intellectuals have spanned the spectrum, but the views of intellectuals as a whole have tended to cluster. Indeed, these views have clustered at one end of the spectrum in the early...

"The story of the fascinating, fraught alliance among Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Maria Weston Chapman -- and how its breakup led to the success of America's most important social movement. In the crucial early years of the Abolition movement, the Boston branch of the cause seized upon the star power of the eloquent ex-slave Frederick Douglass to make its case for slaves' freedom. Journalist William Lloyd Garrison promoted emancipation...

Following the civil rights movement, race relations in the United States entered a new era. Legal gains were interpreted by some as ensuring equal treatment for all and that "colorblind" policies and programs would be the best way forward. Since then, many voices have called for an end to affirmative action and other color-conscious policies and programs, and even for a retreat from public discussion of racism itself. Bolstered by the election of...

Explores how the conservative radio host "tribalized" our politics through his racially divisive, falsehood-ridden portrayal of President Obama. Reifowitz explains that during Obama's eight years in office, Limbaugh repeatedly used a technique called "racial priming" against America's first black president --language designed to heighten white racial or cultural resentment. Limbaugh's aim was to convince his audience that Obama was anti-white, anti-American,...

"Finalist for the 2010 National Book Award, The University of Memphis, Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change" Thomas J. Sugrue is the David Boies Professor of History and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North and The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton). The paradox of racial inequality...

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2001" Mary L. Dudziak is professor of law, history, and political science at the University of Southern California. Her books include Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey, September 11 in History, and Legal Borderlands. In 1958, an African-American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned...

"This book documents Reagan's childhood, political career, and presidency, arguing that Reagan compiled the worst civil rights record of any President since the 1920s; it explores his blithe indifference to the legacy of slavery, assaults on Affirmative Action and Voting Rights, a war on Drugs that ensnared the poor and people of color leading to the carceral state, and his hostility to the Black freedom struggle"--