THE HOUSE THAT RACE BUILT: Black Americans, U.S. Terrain. Edited And With An Introduction by Wahneema Lubiano.

Lubiano, Wahneema (Editor)

ISBN 10: 0679440909 / ISBN 13: 9780679440901

Published by NY. 1997. Pantheon Books, 1997

About this Item

black & black 1/2 cloth hardcover 8vo. (octavo). dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover. very fine cond. mint cond. looks new. like new. as new. binding square & tight. covers clean. edges clean. contents free of markings. dustwrapper in fine cond. not worn or torn or price clipped. nice clean copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no names, inking, underlining, remainder markings etc~. first edition so stated. first printing (#1 in # line). ix+323p. endnotes for each essay. index. about the contributors. contributors = Waheema Lubiano / Toni Morrison / Stephen Steinberg / David Roediger / Neil Gotanda / Howard Winant / Kendall Thomas / Rhonda M. Williams / Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham / David Lionel Smith / Robin D. G. Kelley / Patricia J. Williams / Angela Y. Davis/ Kimberle Williams Crenshaw / Stuart Hall / Cornell West / .american history. african history. politics. african american history. sociology. ~ The House That Race Built is the response by some of this country's most admired intellectuals to the crisis of democracy represented by the recent, ominous shift toward a renewed white racial nationalism. It is unified by a central argument that deserves to be at the heart of the national debate: that "race" and "racism'' must be understood not just as referring to the relations between black and white Americans, but as constituting the central American dynamic by which a pervasive, antidemocratic social inequality is re~created, maintained, and justified to the detriment of all. "Race" is analyzed here not as a phenomenon grounded in biology, or any other science, but as the ideological means by which a system of hierarchy and antidemocratic dominance is established and perpetuated against the grain of formal political commitments and the general public interest in establishing equality and social justice. In a post~civil rights era of rapidly increasing economic and social apartheid, The House That Race Built makes us see how Americans' continuing delusory investments in the privileges of whiteness and the pathology of blackness uphold a social hierarchy that is destructive of democratic possibility. This book's analysis of race and racism extends to the complexities of within~the~group dynamics of black Americans. How race is defined, and who gets to talk about it, determine how race and American whiteness will be understood and used: either to reconsolidate racial domination or to establish racial democracy. Seller Inventory # 7062102

Bibliographic Details

Title: THE HOUSE THAT RACE BUILT: Black Americans, ...

Publisher: NY. 1997. Pantheon Books

Publication Date: 1997

Binding: Hardcover

Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Essays by Cornel West, Toni Morrison, Angela Davis, David Roediger, and other notable contributors explore the issue of race in contemporary America and the dangerous implications of racism for our democratic society. 17,500 first printing.

Review:

This wide-ranging collection of essays by 15 scholars illustrates that there are many African American readings and responses to race. In "Home," Nobel laureate Toni Morrison muses on her uses of African American speech and the question of "how to be free and situated; how to convert a racist house into a race specific yet nonracist house." Harvard professor Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham's "Rethinking Vernacular Culture" details the affirmative role of Afro-American religion and blues-oriented race records of the 1920s and 1930s. Williams College's David Lionel Smith, in "What Is Black Culture?", gives a well-nuanced critique of the contradictory and limiting definitions of "blackness," while activist-educator Angela Y. Davis's "Race and Criminality" shows how blacks have become a racially criminalized commodity in America's rapidly expanding prison industry. The House That Race Built is a strong, intelligent weapon against racism. --Eugene Holley, Jr.