The Chicago Blog

In a recent review posted to the Bookslut website, Barbara J. King praises anthropologist Richard Price's most recent book Travels with Tooy: History, Memory, and the African American Imagination for its unique ethnographic account of the author's encounter with the enigmatic subject of Tooy—a priest, philosopher, and healer living in a shantytown on the outskirts of Cayenne, French Guiana. Commending the book for drawing not only on Price's ethnographic and archival research, but also on Tooy's teachings, songs, and stories, King writes:

The book glows with knowledge, Tooy's as much as Rich's, as Rich is the first to say; he writes of Tooy with love, as a friend, but also with respect, calling him "a fellow intellectual.…"

The complexity of Rich's analysis sits side by side with the complexity of Tooy's time-and-space travel. As I close the book (and begin to listen to Tooy's voice at Rich's website ), I know that I grasp only a small fraction of what Tooy knows. It's a good feeling, in a peculiar way; after all, that's what inhabiting an unfamiliar reality will do for a person—teach her what she doesn't know, and how to learn something more.

Read the article at Bookslut. Also listen to a selection of archived sound files to accompany the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Black Studies | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 02:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's New York Times is running a piece on author George E. Lewis's new book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music—the authoritative historical account of one of America's most influential avant-garde jazz collectives. Founded in 1965, many icons of the avant garde, musicians like Anthony Braxton and Leo Wadada Smith, have joined its ranks. And many of them continue to play as members of the collective today. The NYT article includes information on several upcoming events in NYC including a special book release concert happening next Friday (May 9th) at the Community Church of New York. From the NYT:

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, [is] an organization that has fostered some of the most vital American avant-garde music of the last 40 years.

Though noncommercial, often pointedly conceptual and unabashedly arcane, this music has had a profound influence over the years on several generations of experimental musicians worldwide.

The scene plays out vividly in A Power Stronger Than Itself: The A.A.C.M. and Experimental Music, an important book by the trombonist-composer-scholar George Lewis due out from the University of Chicago Press this month. Reconstructing that inaugural meeting from audio tapes, Mr. Lewis conveys not only Mr. Abrams's aim but also the vigorous debate begun by his notion of "original music." (Whose music? How original?) From the start, its clear, the association expressed its firm ideals partly through collective discourse.

Next Friday night another sort of discourse will unfold at the Community Church of New York in Murray Hill, when the association convenes a panel discussion with a handful of its current members, including Mr. Lewis, the multireedist Henry Threadgill and the pianist and vocalist Amina Claudine Myers. The conversation will precede a concert featuring Mr. Lewis and Mr. Abrams in an improvising trio with the trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith.

You can read the full article on the NYT website, or see an excerpt from the book. To find out more about the show navigate to the AACM's New York chapter website.

Archived in Black Studies | Books for the News | Chicago | History | Music
Posted by TXM at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In 1965 a group of Chicago musicians dedicated to exploring the frontiers of American jazz banded together to create the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians—one of the most radical and influential musical collectives in the history of the genre. Now, author George E. Lewis has chronicled the definitive history of the movement in, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, a book music critic Peter Margasak praises in today's Chicago Reader for "[going] deeper into the formation and development of the AACM than any previous history, and as a formal acknowledgment of the group's enormous importance and influence…."

Margasak's article continues:

In the early 60s the marketplace was indifferent or hostile to creative jazz, and the AACM was the first sustained musician-run group to support it, producing legendary artists like Anthony Braxton, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Henry Threadgill. The organization remains active today, led by reedist Douglas Ewart and flutist Nicole Mitchell, and its members still display the fierce determination and brilliant creativity that made its name a seal of quality.

And on Tuesday, April 15, 4:15 pm you'll have a chance to see some of the AACM's brilliant creativity yourself if you head down to the Chicago Cultural Center's Cassidy Theater where the author along with some of AACM's current members will deliver a live performance and discussion of "the history of the AACM and strategies independent artists can use to form similar collectives."

The book is officially slated for release next month, but in the meantime, you can read the rest of the Reader article online, or see an excerpt from the book.

Time Out magazine also weighs in with an article published in their most recent issue. You can find it online here.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | History | Music | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nicholas J. G. Winter is publishing his book, Dangerous Frames: How Ideas about Race and Gender Shape Public Opinion at the perfect time, just as these issues are getting their most concrete expression in the political sphere. We asked him to reflect on the the Democratic presidential race in light of the ideas he explores in his book.

The historic presence in the Democratic primary race of both the first woman and the first African American with serious shots at a major party nomination has understandably brought lots of media attention to the roles of gender and race in Americans’ political thinking and voting. Much of this coverage obscures rather than clarifies those roles.

On the one hand, commentators ask whether black and female voters support “one of their own.” Do black voters support Obama? Do women support Clinton?

On the other hand, others ask some version of the question “Are Americans more racist or more sexist?” Is gender more fundamental to American social structure, or is racism more centrally embedded in American politics. More concretely, will white male swing voters be more disinclined to vote for a woman or an African American man in the general election?

Continue reading "Race, Gender, and Politics: Dangerous Frames" »

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Black Studies | Politics and Current Events
Posted by DB at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Consistently an outsider—a child of the fundamentalist South with an eighth-grade education, a self-taught intellectual, a black man married to a white woman—Richard Wright nonetheless became the unparalleled voice of his time. The first full-scale biography of the author best known for his searing novels Black Boy and Native Son, Richard Wright: The Life and Times brings the man and his work—in all their complexity and distinction—to vibrant life. Acclaimed biographer Hazel Rowley chronicles Wright's unprecedented journey from a sharecropper's shack in Mississippi to Chicago's South Side to international renown as a writer and outspoken critic of racism.

Drawing on journals, letters, and eyewitness accounts, Richard Wright probes the author's relationships with Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison, his attraction to Communism, and his so-called exile in France. Skillfully interweaving quotes from Wright's own writings, Rowley deftly portrays a passionate, courageous, and flawed man who would become one of our most enduring literary figures.

Read the press release.

Archived in Biography | Black Studies | History | Literature | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The online e-zine PopMatters is running an interesting review of Devah Pager's new book Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. Like much of the other press this book has been receiving lately, the review focuses on Pager's revealing analysis of the links between the U. S. penal system and the deep rooted racial and economic inequalities in the U. S. job market. PopMatters reviewer Steve Horowitz writes:

Most Americans find the idea of serving two punishments for the one crime unfair, yet according to Princeton Professor of Sociology Devah Pager, this happens all the time. A person spends time in jail, and then suffers from the stigma of incarceration after being released.… This isn't news to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the justice system. However, Pager extends her analysis one step further through an experimental field study in metropolitan Milwaukee. She sends out pairs of young men with matched resumes on job searches for employment and makes some startling discoveries.

The Princeton professor shows that employers regularly exclude ex-offenders from consideration for entry-level, low-paying jobs, and provides strong evidence that the situation for young black men is significantly worse than for their white counterparts. Her study shows that white men who do not have a criminal record are more than twice as likely to be considered for a job as white men with ex-offender records. A white man with a criminal record has the same chance of being considered for a job as a black man without one. A black man without a record, or a white man with a criminal history, is three times more likely to be considered for a job than a black man with a criminal record.

Hrowitz concludes:

Much of what Pager says flies against the conventional belief these days that says that race is no longer a strong barrier against getting a job. She points out that most Americans no longer believe that ascribed characteristics, like race, hinder a person from employment. That may be true for middle-class and high-end jobs, but unfortunately, racism is still a problem on the low end of the pay scale, where most people with a record look for work.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

“In 1970, President Nixon announced a massive war on crime. More prisons were built and more people incarcerated than ever before in U.S. history. With the media's portrayal of convicts as demons, the public attitude toward anyone who had ever been arrested became bleak and hostile. According to Pager [Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration], this attitude prevails today, particularly in the job market. Using scholarly research, field research in Milwaukee, and graphics, she shows that ex-offenders, white or black, stand a very poor chance of getting a legitimate job (though black men with clean records fared the same as whites just out of prison). As a result, many live in poverty or return to crime. Pager is not an activist clamoring for reform but instead presents her findings in a clearheaded manner, pointing out the societal consequences of the predicament and suggesting ways for change. Written for the general reader with a nod to the academic audience, the book is both informative and convincing. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal

Read the press release. Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Press Releases | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Boston Globe's Christopher Shea wrote an interesting piece for last Sunday's paper on America's growing prison system and its formative impact on American society. In his article, Shea details the revealing social experiment in Devah Pager's new book, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration, to show how the American penal system has become an "engine of inequality … actively [widening] the gap between the poor—especially poor black men—and everyone else." Shea continues:

In an ideal penal system, prisoners might exit the system having paid their debt to society and be more or less restored to their previous status as free men and women. But Pager's book demonstrates just how detached from reality that view is. She had four college students, two black and two white, pose as applicants for low-level jobs in Milwaukee.…

They used résumés that were nearly identical—high school degrees, steady progress from entry-level work to a supervisory position—except that in some cases the applicant had a drug conviction in his past… for which he served an 18-month sentence and then behaved perfectly on parole.…

In her field study, Pager found that her black applicants with criminal records got called for an interview—or to interview on the spot, as they applied in person—a mere 5 percent of the time. That compared with 14 percent for the black applicants without a criminal record. Meanwhile, the white applicants with a record were called back 17 percent of the time, compared with 34 percent for the white men lacking the blotch on their résumé. "Two strikes"—blackness and a record—"and you're out" is how Pager summarizes her findings.

Read the rest of the article on the Boston Globe website.
Read an excerpt from Pager's book.

Archived in Black Studies | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Daniel Lazare has written a fascinating review of several books on America's growing prison crisis for Monday's edition of the Nation. According to Lazare, the U.S. prison system currently incarcerates about a quarter of the world's prisoners with "about 3.2 percent of the adult population under some form of criminal-justice supervision." And for African Americans, Lazare writes, "the numbers are even more astonishing. By the mid-1990s, 7 percent of black males were behind bars, while the rate of imprisonment for black males between the ages of 25 and 29 now stands at one in eight." But according to Lazare this is only half the problem; what happens after this large, racially disparate prison population is released to face the prospects of finding a job and living without crime? Lazare turns to Devah Pager's new book, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration for the answer:

In Marked, Devah Pager, who also teaches sociology at Princeton, uses a simple technique to show how mass incarceration has undone the small amount of racial progress achieved in the 1960s and '70s. Working with two pairs of male college students in Milwaukee, one white and the other black, she drilled them on how to present themselves and answer questions. Then, arming them with phony résumés, she sent them out to apply for entry-level jobs. The résumés were identical in all respects but one. Where one member of each team had nothing indicating a criminal record, the other's résumés showed an eighteen-month sentence for drugs.…

The results? The white applicant with a prison record was half as likely to be called back for a second interview as the white applicant without. But the black applicant without a criminal record was no more likely to be called back than the white applicant with a record, while the black applicant with a record was two-thirds less likely to be called back than the black applicant without. The black applicant with a record therefore wound up doubly penalized—as a black man and as an ex-con. With the chances of a call-back reduced to just 5 percent, the overall effect, Pager writes, was "almost total exclusion from this labor market.…" This is not only bad news for those arrested but bad news for those who have to foot the bill for their incarceration and for dealing with the social problems that labor-market exclusion on this scale helps generate."

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In a recent article for the Chicago Tribune staff reporter Ron Grossman delivers a fascinating account of the long legacy of sociological study that has used Chicago's South Side as its laboratory. Grossman begins his article by mentioning one of the latest additions to this legacy, Mary Pattillo's Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. Her book, like those of the many other sociologists who have chosen to study the South Side's unique black urban communities, focuses on the sharp divides in race, class, and culture that can be found in the area's neighborhoods. But it also explores a growing phenomena in Chicago's South Side communities, the black urban middle class. Examining the social impact of the gentrification of neighborhoods that have for years been home to some of the city's poorest residents, Pattillo's book continues to break new ground in one of the most often studied urban neighborhoods in America.

You can read Grossman's article online at the Tribune website, or navigate to the press's site to find out more about Pattillo's fascinating new book, as well as read an excerpt.

Archived in Anthropology | Black Studies | Chicago | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mary Pattillo, author of the recently published Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City, penned a fascinating op-ed piece for Sunday's Chicago Tribune on the rapidly changing face of Chicago's black urban communities. Pattillo's article begins:

"No more blacks." That was the forecast of a resident of the Oakland community when asked about the future of her South Side neighborhood.

"No more blacks?" I responded, worried in no small part because my research is about black gentrification.

"[A] couple of blacks" would be left, the woman then allowed. "They got money.

This simple prediction is rich with meaning. For one thing, it helps establish the players in the widespread upscaling of Chicago: The little man. The middleman. And then, The Man.

The prediction also lays out what's at stake, not just in Oakland and North Kenwood on the South Side, but in various Chicago neighborhoods. In the process of "building, breaking, rebuilding" the City of the Big Shoulders, as Chicago's poet Carl Sandburg so eloquently put it, who is going to keep the little man from being left behind? Are Chicago's shoulders big enough to serve, include and celebrate everyone?

Pattillo's article seems to leave this question open ended, but makes a point that it is the rising black middle class who must ultimately shoulder the responsibility of brokering between the lower and upper classes if the future of some of the more underprivileged members of Chicago's black urban communities is to look any brighter.

Also, social historian Arnold Hirsch (Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960) reviewed Pattillo's new book in the July 14 edition of the Tribune. The online version is still up on their website.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Black Studies | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Chicago Reader recently ran an insightful analysis of Mary Pattillo's new book, Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. Reviewer Harold Henderson reflects on how Pattillo's participant-observer study of Chicago's North Kenwood—Oakland neighborhood reveals a tangled network of competing interests, even within the community itself, that if left unresolved make any predictions as to the future of the neighborhood and its inhabitants uncertain at best. Henderson writes:

Mayor Daley's brave new Chicago doesn't work for everyone. Eric Klinenberg tried to make this point five years ago with Heat Wave, his examination of who suffered and how during a 1995 natural disaster. Now Northwestern University sociologist Mary Pattillo nails it with Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City …

She traces North Kenwood—Oakland's fortunes from late-19th-century prosperity to 1970s poverty and back to relative prosperity, then focuses on the uneasy position of the growing population of middle-class black professionals, who often find themselves acting as brokers between "the Man" downtown and the "littlemen" back in the hood.…

After two decades of gentrification the neighborhood has three new schools, less public housing, less crime, and a booming real-estate market. But most of its low-income kids still attend the old, underachieving schools. Former residents of the demolished public-housing high-rises have seen their promised right of return demolished as well. And the new black bourgeoisie is as enthusiastic about stopping the old timers' sociable practice of boulevard barbecuing as it is about fighting crime. Through the lens of this neighborhood Pattillo depicts a city where liberty and justice for all is being transformed—ever so slowly, ever so reasonably—into order and tranquility for some.

Henderson concludes: “A century from now, when today's sociologists and journalists are dust and their books are too, those who want to understand what the hell happened to Chicago will be finding the answer in this one.”

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Author Mary Pattillo was featured Tuesday on Chicago Public Radio's daily news-radio talk show Eight Forty-Eight. Pattillo speaks with host Richard Steele about her new book Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City and the revitalization of Chicago's North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood. Their conversation explores the problems facing this rapidly gentrifying black community to touch on broader issues of race and class in contemporary urban America. You can find archived audio of the show on the Chicago Public Radio website.

Pattillo will also be at 57th Street Books today at 7pm to read from her book. In the meantime, you can check out an excerpt on our website.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Events | Black Studies | Chicago | Politics and Current Events | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No story of World War II is more triumphant than the liberation of France, made famous in countless photos of Parisians waving American flags and kissing GIs as columns of troops paraded down the Champs Élysées. But one of the least-known stories from that era is also one of the ugliest chapters in the history of Jim Crow. In The Interpreter, celebrated author Alice Kaplan recovers this story both as eyewitnesses first saw it, and as it still haunts us today.

The American Army executed 70 of its own soldiers between 1943 and 1946—almost all of them black, in an army that was overwhelmingly white. Through the French interpreter Louis Guilloux's eyes, Kaplan narrates two different trials: one of a white officer, one of a black soldier, both accused of murder. Both were court-martialed in the same room, yet the outcomes could not have been more different.

Kaplan's insight into character and setting make The Interpreter an indelible portrait of war, race relations, and the dangers of capital punishment.

"American racism could become deadly for black soldiers on the front. The Interpreter reminds us of this sad component of a heroic chapter in American military history."
Los Angeles Times

"A cross section of a tragedy … This is an extraordinary book."
John Lukacs, Boston Globe

Read the press release.

Archived in Black Studies | History | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The March 31 Boston Globe featured an article reviewing several new books about urban gentrification and its complex impact on the politics of race and class in contemporary urban America. These works together create, in the words of reviewer Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, "a more nuanced picture of gentrification."

Venkatesh praises Mary Pattillo, author of Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City, for her detailed examination of this issue through her first-hand account of conflict, cooperation, and community building in Chicago's North Kenwood-Oakland (NKO) neighborhood—a rapidly changing African American community on Chicago's South Side. From the review:

Pattillo eschews most norms of social scientific objectivity by taking up residence in NKO. She is a homeowner and secretary of a local neighborhood association with great influence over local development—not to mention a Northwestern University professor. …

Pattillo acknowledges her complicated role, as both interested party and analyst. But through her experience we see how complicated life can be for the black middle class.

In her neighborhood, Pattillo and other newly-arriving homeowners, many of whom find themselves sandwiched between empty lots and dilapidated, low-income housing projects, are caught between two motivations: the wish to live in an area with decent stores, well-maintained parks, and adequate city services; and the ethical pull of advocating on behalf of those poorer blacks who might be displaced if the neighborhood continues to gentrify.

Ultimately, Black on the Block argues that while these fissures have come to define the black community, the reality is that many African Americans choose participation over abdication and involvement over withdrawal—even when disagreements become bitter and acrimonious.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mary Pattillo is a Newsweek Woman of the 21st Century because of her critically acclaimed last book, Black Picket Fences, which changed forever the way many of us think about the black middleclass in America today. In Black on the Block, Pattillo returns to the South Side of Chicago to explore how class conflicts within the black community are dramatically changing the shape and terms of racial solidarity. Her focus is the work that more affluent members of the black community are doing to lift historically impoverished and dilapidated neighborhoods out of abject poverty—and the tensions that arise between poorer and middleclass blacks when they do so. Black on the Block explores the often heated battles between haves and have-nots, home owners and apartment dwellers, and newcomers and old timers as they clash over the political implications of gentrification and reaching out to white economic power bases.

Read the press release. We also have an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Black Studies | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Dewey once said that every generation has to accomplish democracy for itself, because social justice is something that cannot be handed down from one person to another: it has to be worked out in terms of the needs, problems, and conditions of the present moment and its distinct challenges. In this impassioned and inspirational work, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. puts Dewey’s idea into the service of his fellow African Americans. According to Glaude, black politics have grown increasingly stagnant and even ineffectual because of their basis in the sufferings and indignities of the past instead of the real-live obstacles of the present moment. To remedy this, Glaude here dislodges black politics from the dogmas and fixed ideas of the Civil Rights movement and points them in the direction of more pragmatic solutions rooted in the here and now. Poor health, alarming rates of imprisonment, drugs, and the advanced concentration of poverty in our nation’s cities warrant a form of political engagement that steps out of the shadows of the black freedom struggles of the 1960s and rises to the complexities of the 21st century with more innovative thinking, a greater emphasis on responsibility and personal accountability, and a fuller embrace of education and participatory democracy.

Heady, provocative, and brimming with practical wisdom, In a Shade of Blue is a remarkable work of political commentary on a scale rarely seen today. To follow its trajectory is to learn how African Americans arrived at this critical moment in their history and to envision where they might head next.

Read the press release. Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Philosophy | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases | Religion
Posted by TXM at 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author and Princeton University professor of religious studies, was featured on the Tavis Smiley Show last weekend discussing "how his new book, In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America, offers a starting point for examining the upcoming election season through the eyes of African Americans." You can listen to archived audio from the program online at the Tavis Smiley Show website.

With In a Shade of Blue Glaude, one of our nation's rising young African American intellectuals, makes an impassioned plea for black America to address its social problems by recourse to experience and with an eye set on the promise and potential of the future, rather than the fixed ideas and categories of the past. Heady, inspirational, and brimming with practical wisdom, this timely book is a remarkable work of political commentary on a scale rarely seen today. To follow its trajectory is to learn how African Americans arrived at this critical moment in their history and to envision where they might head in the twenty-first century.

Read an excerpt.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Black Studies | Philosophy | Politics and Current Events | Religion | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since 1986 Martin Luther King day has been celebrated as a federal holiday in honor of one of the most influential and effective leaders of the American civil rights movement. And what better way to spend your day off than taking a little time to reflect on the long story of America's struggle toward equality, past and present. The Press has published a comprehensive list of books on civil rights in America, covering everything from the life of Martin Luther King's mentor Bayard Rustin, to more contemporary views on African-American citizenship.

To find more books on the American civil rights movement and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. see our related complete catalog categories in Black Studies, Politics, and Sociology.

Happy MLK day!

Archived in Black Studies | Commentary
Posted by TXM at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An article in today's New York Times reports that historian John Hope Franklin has been awarded the John W. Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the study of humanity. The Times calls the million dollar award "the prize that Alfred Nobel forgot … specifically intended for areas that the Nobel Prizes do not cover like history, political science, sociology, and philosophy." Franklin, currently emeritus professor of history at Duke University, will split the prize with Yu Ying-shih, a professor of Chinese history at Princeton.

The New York Times writes that "Franklin is widely regarded as among the first scholars to explore fully the role of African Americans in the nation's history." Some of that scholarship was published by the University of Chicago Press. We published Racial Equality in America (1976), George Washington Williams: A Biography (1985), and Reconstruction after the Civil War, now in a third edition.

This is the third year that the Kluge Prize has been awarded by the Library of Congress. Franklin is the fourth UCP author to receive the prize; previous winners include Jaroslav Pelikan, Paul Ricoeur, and Leszek Kolakowski.

Archived in Awards | Black Studies | History
Posted by TXM at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Boston Review recently reviewed Danielle Allen's Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. From the review by Nick Bromell: "Allen understands that democracy originates in the subjective dimension of everyday life, and she focuses on what she calls our 'habit of citizenship'—the ways we often unconsciously regard and interact with fellow citizens…. [Her] focus on race is entirely appropriate."

"Don't talk to strangers" is the advice long given to children by parents of all classes and races. Today it has blossomed into a fundamental precept of civic education, reflecting interracial distrust, personal and political alienation, and a profound suspicion of others. In Talking to Strangers, a powerful and eloquent essay, Danielle Allen, a 2002 MacArthur Fellow, takes this maxim back to Little Rock, rooting out the seeds of distrust to replace them with "a citizenship of political friendship."

Read an excerpt and interview with the author.

Archived in Black Studies | Classics | History | Politics and Current Events | Reviews
Posted by at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white."
—Barack Obama, Keynote Address, Democratic National Convention, 2004

Ron Netsky, a writer for City (Rochester, NY), observed that the term "acting white" has been appearing in the media a lot lately (most recently in The Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times) . Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu popularized the term in a study published in Urban Review in 1986. Fordham is also the author of Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity, and Success at Capital High, a book which explores academic achievement within the Black community and the price students pay for attaining it.

Earlier this month, Netsky interviewed Fordham about Black education issues and what it means to "act white."

City: In Blacked Out, you write that one of the things that seems to make the education process difficult is generational.

Fordham: After the Brown decision and the Civil Rights act—in the 1960s generally—black people were engrossed in acknowledging what they had achieved. Their children were the kids that I studied, and their parents were always baffled by why their kids wouldn't take advantage of what they saw as the wider opportunities available to them. And rightfully so. You fight for something so hard, why don't the kids do so much better? Because if we had those opportunities, we would have gone much further in life than we've actually gone.

But they don't get what is happening in culture systems, how they operate. These kids are fearful of the loss of identity. This is not something they would verbalize or even have the understanding to talk about if you asked them.

The rest of the interview and an essay by Signithia Fordham titled "Was Rosa Parks 'acting white'?" can be read here.

Visit our black studies catalog.

Archived in Anthropology | Black Studies | Books for the News | Education
Posted by at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On February 21, Ronne Hartfield will discuss and sign Another Way Home: The Tangled Roots of Race in One Chicago Family as part of Southern Illinois University Carbondale's Black History Month celebrations. The event is free and open to the public.

Spanning most of the twentieth century, Another Way Home celebrates the special circumstance of being born and reared in a household where being a woman of mixed race could be a fundamental source of strength, vitality, and courage. Read an excerpt from the book.

Visit our black studies catalog.

Archived in Author Events | Biography | Black Studies | Chicago
Posted by at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)