About the Book
The United States is not post-racial, despite claims otherwise. The days of lynching have been replaced with a pernicious modern racism and race-based violence equally strong and more difficult to untangle. This violence too often results in the killing of Black Americans, particularly males. While society may believe we have transcended race, contemporary history tells another story with the recent killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and others. While their deaths are tragic, the greater tragedy is that incidents making the news are only a fraction of the assault on communities of color in. This volume takes seriously the need for concentrated and powerful dialogue to emerge in the wake of these murders that illuminates the assault in a powerful and provocative way. Through a series of essays, written by leading and emerging academics in the field of race studies, the short “conversations” in this collection challenge readers to contemplate the myth of post-raciality, and the real nature of the assaults on communities of color. The essays in this volume, all under 2000 words, cut to the heart of the matter using current assaults as points of departure and is relevant to education, sociology, law, social work, and criminology.
Table of Contents:
(Foreword) Rick Ayers & William Ayers Breathe: Notes On White Supremacy and The Fierce Urgency Of Now
(Poem) Lillie Lindsay: Red Riding Hoodie
(Introduction) Lori L. Martin, Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, Nicholas D. Hartlep, Cleveland Hayes, Roland W. Mitchell, & Chaunda M. Allen-Mitchell - By Means of Introduction: An Open Letter
(Poem) Bryce Davis Bohon - Peace: A 6 Year Old St. Louisan Speaks
Section 1: The Mythical Post-Racial America
1. Jason Irizary & Jonathan Rosa - Complicating Black and Brown Solidarity:Racial Positioning and Re-Positioning in “Post-Racial America”
2. Brad Kershner - The Opposite Of A Great Lie: Racism, Capitalism, and Education Policy Knowing Our History
3. René Antrop-González: Apartheid and Symbolic Violence in The New Latin@ South: Reflections and Implications
4. Chezare A. Warren - I Get Angry: The Quandary of Postracialism
5. Paul Gorski - Ferguson and The Violence of “It’s-All-About-Me” White Liberalism
6. Dana L. Bickmore - “I Need To Check With Corporate”
7. Leigh Jefferson Griffin - Skittles, Arizona Iced Tea, and Cigarettes: The Price of Black Lives in A “Post-Racial” America
8. Amanda R. Martinez & Robert Gutierrez-Perez - Are We Post-Post-Race Yet?: Moving Beyond The Black-White Binary Towards a Mestiza/O Consciousness
9. Melinda Jackson & Dari Green - Contradicting Realities in The Mythical Post Racial: America Blinded to Matters of Color?
10. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor - What Divides Black America?
Section 2: Racism & Violence Against Minority and Minoritized Communities
11. David O. Stovall - Normalizing Black Death: Michael Brown, Marissa Alexander, Dred Scott and the Apartheid State
12. Christine Sleeter - Viewing Barack Obama Through Racist Stereotypes
13. Cheryl Matias & Roberto Montoya - When Michael’s Death Means Our Own Children’s Death:Critical Race Parenting in A Time of Racial Extermination
14. Reanna S. Roby & Theodorea Regina Berry - Respectability Politics and Acts Of Violence
15. Horace R. Hall - Countering Postcolonial Assaults on Black American Life
16. Subini Ancy Annamma - We Can’t Breathe: The Impacts of Police Brutality on Women of Color
17. Susan Anne Cridland-Hughes & Lagarrett J. King - Killing Me Softly: How Violence Comes From the Curriculum We Teach
18. Robin Diangelo - The Sketch Factor: “Bad Neighborhood” Narratives As Discursive Violence
19. Dewey M. Clayton - Racial Justice in America: Alternative Universes
20. Lisa B. Haileab And Ivory A. Toldson - The Death of Amir De’Mani Brooks: Counseling Psychologists Response To Racism and Violence Against Black Communities
Section 3: The Black Male Experience in The United States
21. Donna Y. Ford – Save Our Black Males: I Should Not Have to Celebrate That My Son Lived to See the Age of 35
22. Howard C. Stevenson & Kelsey Jones - What if My Trayvon Came Home? Teaching a Wretched Truth About Breathing While Black
23. Larry C. Bryant - Gone In 90 Seconds: A Black Male Body – Normalcy, Never Again
24. Cassandra D. Chaney - Michael Brown and The Shared Ambivalence of Black And Brown America
25. Shirley Mthethwa-Sommers - Echoes of ‘People Stealers:’ Trauma Revisited
26. Lori Martin & Jahaan Chandler - And to Make Matters Worse
27. Cleveland Hayes - And You Wonder Why I Am An Angry Black Man
28. Roderick L. Carey - Desensationalizing Black Males: Navigating and Deconstructing Extreme Imageries Of Black Males and Masculinities
29. Donna Vukelich-Selva – If The System’s Broke…
30. Joni Boyd Acuff - Grey Hoodies, Baggy Jeans And Brown Skin: The Violence Against Black Males Via Signs and Signifiers
Section 4: The Fight For Equity: Communities Speak Up And Out
31. Paul D. Grant & Carl A/ Grant - To Be Men And Women: The Black Struggle For Justice Continues
32. Lisa (Leigh) Patel - Educational Research and Institutionalized Oppression
33. Audrey Lensmire - Necessary and Insufficient: Teaching and Writing in a Violent World
34. Christine Clark - The Insidiousness of Indifference to Black Injury in White America
35. Enrique Alemán, Jr. – Resisting the De-Humanization of Youth of Color: On The Death of Big Mike, “Illegal” Your Leaders and Proud Utes
36. Danielle Joy Davis, Christopher Aaron Deans, Jason S. Davis, Linda M. Davis, & Eilleen Buckner - A Call for Compassion: An African American St. Louis Family’s Reflections on Ferguson
37. Adonay A. Montes - Living the Silence: An Impediment to Culture and Equity
38. Isaac M. Carter - New-Freedom School Movement
39. Rochelle Brock - Dreaming Of Revolution: My Struggle To Understand The Assault On Blackness
40. Shirley R. Steinberg - Postmodern Fire Hoses: Media Recollections From Southern California
About the Author :
Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, Shirley B. Barton Endowed Professor, College of Human Sciences and Education, Louisiana State University
Nicholas D. Hartlep, Assistant Professor, College of Education, College of Education, Illinois State University
Lori L. Martin, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Louisiana State University
Cleveland Hayes, Associate Professor, College of Education and Organizational Leadership, University of Laverne
Roland W. Mitchell, Interim Associate Dean and Associate Professor, College of Human Sciences and Education, Louisiana State University
Chaunda M. Allen-Mitchell, Director Office of Multicultural Affairs, Louisiana State University
Review :
[T]he book encourages readers to go beyond the post-racial myth and explore the race-based violence plaguing minority communities, particularly Black communities, today.
What makes a community? Can we segregate by skin color, or walled off entire cities as in Gaza, and still build responsive and generative social units? We cannot hope to create in the USA the kind of reflective and active society where people learn from each other through dialogue across difference if the dominant white culture refuses a social compact among all members that reflects diversity and solidarity. Sometimes angry, always passionate and principled, the short chapters in Assaults on Communities of Color are like bursts of fire that both illuminate ideas and ignite commitments to critical and inclusive democratic praxis.
The Assault on Communities of Color breaks through all the lies, misconceptions, and distortions that fuel the idea that we now live in a post racial state. Not only does the book explore how race and violence intersect in a myriad of institutional, symbolic, and everyday relations, the authors use this point of analysis to begin a dialogue that is critical, informative, and speaks to the need to develop democratic public spheres and a formative culture in which such a dialogue can take place and move from words, shared values, and ethical responsibility to collective action. The Assault on Communities of Color offers up a signpost and much needed vision that at this particular historical provides a vibrant language, fresh politics, and inspired sense of civic courage.
There is a long history of racial, social, and political unrest and injustice in this nation – a historical trauma. Notions about violence have always developed alongside socioeconomic and race-based realities. Views of the nature of violence are rooted in racist and classist worldviews that often place the deficiencies of certain groups’ inability to disrupt racism, cycles of poverty, and educational inequities and the architects of their own urban casualties (Riessman, 1962; Moynihan, 1965. Issues in Ferguson, Missouri and other communities are the newest failure of the larger society to substantially address the systemic issues of racial injustice and violation of human rights in communities of color in the United States. This volume provides a critical look at issues such as racism, community segregation, whiteness and other hegemonies and how they re/produce injustice and violence; but also how space, place, and institutionalism produce and maintain white dominance and violence. This is the right volume during a time of wrongs.
We live in a time when racial tension is bubbling up and seeping through the cracks in the sidewalk. It is imperative that we as educators take to the streets and classrooms to change the hearts and minds of young people to provide opportunities to and solidify the dignity of all. In The Assault on Communities of Color, Fasching-Varner, Hartlep, and their colleagues make it crystal clear that we cannot wait any longer to stand up, and rise up, against injustice.
Searing, gritty, and jarring—this collection of essays brings together theoretical complexity with personal reflections to propel forward the public dialogue on race and violence in the United States today. Fasching-Varner, Hartlep, and colleagues implore us to grapple with the intricacies and the excesses of the profoundly normalized nature of the Assault on Communities of Color, even while taking hope in collectivizings that permeate the moment that we are in as being nothing short of building movement for anti-oppressive change. Read this book and join the movement.
