Conjuring Crisis: Racism and Civil Rights in a Southern Military City - Softcover

Baca, Professor George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813547520 ISBN 13: 9780813547527

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2010

Synopsis

How have civil rights transformed racial politics in America? Connecting economic and social reforms to racial and class inequality, Conjuring Crisis counters the myth of steady race progress by analyzing how the federal government and local politicians have sometimes "reformed" politics in ways that have amplified racism in the post civil-rights era.

In the 1990s at Fort Bragg and Fayetteville, North Carolina, the city's dominant political coalition of white civic and business leaders had lost control of the city council. Amid accusations of racism in the police department, two white council members joined black colleagues in support of the NAACP's demand for an investigation. George Baca's ethnographic research reveals how residents and politicians transformed an ordinary conflict into a "crisis" that raised the specter of chaos and disaster. He explores new territory by focusing on the broader intersection of militarization, urban politics, and civil rights.

About this title

About the Author

GEORGE BACA is a research scholar at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. He is the editor of Nationalism's Bloody Terrain: Racism, Class Inequality, and the Politics of Recognition, coeditor of Empirical Futures: Anthropologists and Historians Engage the Work of Sidney W. Mintz, and associate editor of Dialectical Anthropology.

From the Back Cover

Connecting economic and social reforms to racial and class inequality, "Conjuring Crisis" counters the myth of steady race progress in America by analyzing how the federal government and local politicians have sometimes "reformed" politics in ways that have amplified racism in the post civil-rights era. George Baca's ethnographic research reveals how residents and politicians at Fort Bragg and Fayetteville, North Carolina in the 1990s transformed an ordinary conflict into a "crisis" that raised the specter of chaos and disaster. He explores new territory by focusing on the broader intersection of militarization, urban politics, and civil rights.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813547520
• ISBN 13: 9780813547527
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 210