More beautiful and more terrible
Subtitle: the embrace and transcendence of racial inequality in the United States
By: Imani Perry
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 248
ISBN-13: 9780814767368; 9780814767375; 9780814768181
Description: 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. This work compels us to think beyond this insufficient dichotomy in order to see how racial inequality is perpetuated. The author 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. The author leads readers down the path of imagining the possible and points to the way forward.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: "It wasn't me!" : post intent and correlational racism; title: It's all of us : the practice of inequality; title: Telling tales out of school : the work of racial narratives; title: The house that Jack built : inequality via category; title: "I always feel like somebody's watchin' me" : the racing of privacy, voyeurism and surveillance; title: Exceptionally yours : racial escape hatches in the contemporary United States; title: Black taxes and white wages : the social economy of race; title: Conclusion : remediation, or, from proof to possibility.