Toward freedom The case against race reductionism
Book - 2020
The fate of poor and working-class African Americans-who are unquestionably represented among neoliberalism's victims-is inextricably linked to that of other poor and working-class AmericansReed contends that the road to a more just society for African Americans and everyone else is obstructed, in part, by a discourse that equates entrepreneurialism with freedom and independence. This, ultimately, insists on divorcing race and class. In the age of runaway inequality and Black Lives Matter, there is an emerging consensus that our society has failed to redress racial disparities. The culprit, however, is not the sway of a metaphysical racism or the modern survival of a primordial tribalism. Instead, it can be traced to far more comprehen...sible forces, such as the contradictions in access to New Deal era welfare programs, the blinders imposed by the Cold War, and Ronald Reagan's neoliberal assault on the half-century long Keynesian consensus.
- Subjects
- Published
-
London ; New York :
Verso
2020.
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Physical Description
- xi, 202 pages ; 20 cm
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 177-202).
- ISBN
- 9781786634382
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: The Era of Race Reductionism
- 1. When Black Progressives Didn't Separate Race from Class
- New Deal Industrial Democracy And Black Civil Rights
- New Deal Civil Rights Activism Was Working Class
- Black Labor Activism And Antidiscrimination Policy
- 2. Oscar Handlin and the Conservative Implications of Postwar Ethnic Identitarianism
- Ethnic Pluralism And Postwar Liberalism
- Handlin's Race Reductionist Views On Inequality And Civil Rights
- Ethnic Pluralism's Conservative Implications
- The Problem With Ethnic Pluralism For Black Politics
- 3. The Tragedy of the Moynihan Report
- The Moynihan Report
- The Inadequacies of The War on Poverty
- What A Real War on Poverty Would've Looked Like
- 4. Obama and Coates: Postracialism's and Post-postracialism's Yin-Yang Twins of Neoliberal Benign Neglect
- Race And Modern Liberalism
- Obama's Metaphysical Blackness And Mythological Progressive-Universalism
- The Underclass, Postracialism And Neoliberalism
- Reparations, Racial ontology And Neoliberal Benign Neglect
- Conclusion: Race Reductionism and the Path to Precarity for All but a Diverse Few
- Acknowledgments
- Notes