Race Still Matters

The Reality of African American Lives and the Myth of Postracial Society

Edited by Yuya Kiuchi

Subjects: African American Studies, Political Sociology, American Culture, American History
Series: SUNY series in African American Studies
Paperback : 9781438462721, 412 pages, July 2017
Hardcover : 9781438462738, 412 pages, December 2016

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Table of contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part 1. Race
1. Reverse Racism: A Discursive History
Tad Suiter

2. “The Struggle is Real out Here”: The Contextual Reality of Being Black Couples and Families in America
Karlin J. Tichenor

3. Holy Smoke: Church Burnings, Journalism, and the Politics of Race, 1996–2006
Christopher Strain

4. Fear of a Black President: Conspiracy Theory and Racial Paranoia in Obamerica
Travis L. Gosa and Danielle Porter Sanchez

Part 2. Structural Inequality
5. From Orchards to Silicon Valley: African American Suburbanization in the U. S. West, the Black San Jose Model, 1945–2010
Herb Ruffin II

6. African American Economic Experiences: Income, Occupations, Savings, Investments, and Social Security Trends since 2000
LaToya T. Brackett

7. Confronting an Enduring Legacy: Health-Care Workforce Disparity
Costellia H. Talley and Henry C. Talley

Part 3. African American Youth
8. Sustained Inequality: African American Education in a “Postracial” Nation
Daniel R. Davis

9. “Nothing We Could Do or Say”: African American Young Men’s Lived Police Experiences
Rod K. Brunson and Amanda D’Souza

10. African American Youth and the Postracial Societal Myth
Carl S. Taylor and Pamela R. Smith

Part 4. Popular Culture

11. Leave the Prejudice, Take the Power: Crash, Fruitvale Station, and Race in Hollywood in the Twenty-First Century
Justin Gomer

12. African American Female Athletic Image: What We Should Take Away from the London 2012 Olympic Games
Rachel L. Myers

13. An Obama Effect? African American Voting Behavior and the Political Symbolism of a Black President
David C. Wilson, Samantha S. Kelley, Emmanuel Balogun, Christian Solar, and Sahar Salehi

Contributors
Index

Essays debunking the notion that contemporary America is a colorblind society.

Description

More than half a century after the civil rights era of the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, American society is often characterized as postracial. In other words, that the country has moved away from prejudice based on skin color and we live in a colorblind society. The reality, however, is the opposite. African Americans continue to face both explicit and latent discriminations in housing, healthcare, education, and every facet of their lives. Recent cases involving law enforcement officers shooting unarmed Black men also attest to the reality: the problem of the twenty-first century is still the problem of the color line. In Race Still Matters, contributors drawn from a wide array of disciplines use multidisciplinary methods to explore topics such as Black family experiences, hate crimes, race and popular culture, residual discrimination, economic and occupational opportunity gaps, healthcare disparities, education, law enforcement issues, youth culture, and the depiction of Black female athletes. The volume offers irrefutable evidence that race still very much matters in the United States today.

Yuya Kiuchi is Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Michigan State University and the author of Struggles for Equal Voice: The History of African American Media Democracy, also published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"…the collection is fascinating. " — CHOICE