Jim Crow: Selected Resources: Racism

In this profound study of America's persistent racial divide, Molefi Kete Asante, one of our leading scholars of African American history and culture, discusses the festering issue of systemic racism. As Asante makes clear, America continues to be a nation of two peoples with very different histories and perspectives -- a white majority that mainly perceives a land of promise and a black minority very much aware that too many African Americans are still consigned to a ghetto wilderness on the margins of society.

The noted civil rights activist uses allegory and historical example to present a radical vision of the persistence of racism in America. These essays shed light on some of the most perplexing and vexing issues of our day: affirmative action, the disparity between civil rights law and reality, the racist outbursts of some black leaders, the temptation toward violent retaliation, and much more.

White identity in the United States is place bound, asserts George Lipsitz in How Racism Takes Place. An influential scholar in American and racial studies, Lipsitz contends that racism persists because a network of practices skew opportunities and life chances along racial lines. That is, these practices assign people of different races to different spaces and therefore allow grossly unequal access to education, employment, transportation, and shelter.

Albert Memmi's controversial statements about racism and his call to each of us to devote ourselves to its eradication--futile though this effort will be--are straightforward and lucid, yet also powerful and universal. In this remarkable meditation on a subject at the troubled center of contemporary life, Memmi investigates racism as social pathology--a cultural disease that prevails because it allows one segment of society to empower itself at the expense of another.

Are antisemitism and white supremacy manifestations of a general phenomenon? Why didn't racism appear in Europe before the fourteenth century, and why did it flourish as never before in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Why did the twentieth century see institutionalized racism in its most extreme forms? Why are egalitarian societies particularly susceptible to virulent racism? What do apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and the American South under Jim Crow have in common? How did the Holocaust advance civil rights in the United States? With a rare blend of learning, economy, and cutting insight, George Fredrickson surveys the history of Western racism from its emergence in the late Middle Ages to the present.

Why, despite continued efforts to increase understanding and expand opportunities, do black and white Americans still lead separate lives, continually marked by tension and hostility? In his much-lauded classic, newly updated to reflect the changing realities of race in our nation, Andrew Hacker explains the origins and meaning of racism and clarifies the conflicting theories of equality and inferiority. He paints a stark picture of racial inequality in America -- focusing on family life, education, income, and employment -- and explores the current controversies over politics, crime, and the causes of the gap between the races. Illuminating and oftentimes startling,Two Nationsdemonstrates how race has defined America's history and will continue to shape its future.