Democracy in Black

August 1, 2015

The recent shootings in South Carolina (among so many others). The gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Financial losses incurred during the Great Recession, which sent a disproportionate number of African Americans tumbling down the social ladder. No, we're not in a postracial society, and black Americans still experience discrimination. Chair of the Center for African-American studies at Princeton, Glaude blends historical account, personal experience, and careful observation to move the conversation about race in America to the next stage.

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Starred review from November 15, 2015
It has been more than 70 years since Gunnar Myrdal, in An American Dilemma, probed our racial consciousness by showing the gap between promise and performance. It has been only a few months since Ta-Nehisi Coates struck the American nerve, in Between the World and Me, by pointing out that our racial history is more deeply ingrained in racism than Myrdal suggested. Here Princeton scholar Glaude adds to that debate by equating our racist history to a basic gap in values, the notion that black lives matter less in this country and always have. He proves his point cogently, perhaps with less passion than Coates but with more than enough documentation to move the argument along this new and painful track. His ending is unsatisfactory because the problems he pinpoints are so intractable, soas he demonstratesinextricable from American history, that their solution is necessarily utopian and, so, very unlikely. This is every bit as important a book as Coates' more personal account. Essential reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)