Books in the Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities series

Provides an in-depth look at how the black mayors of America's major cities achieve social change. Tracing the historical development and contemporary practice of black mayoral politics, this is a study of the motivations of black politicians, competing ideologies in the black community, and the inner dynamics of urban social change.

The Power of Race in Cuba analyzes racial ideologies that negate the existence of racism and their effect on racial progress, racial attitudes and activism through the lens of Cuba. This work gives a nuanced portrait of black identity and draws from the many black spaces, both formal and informal to highlight black consciousness on the island.

Malcolm X at Oxford Union tells one of the great unknown stories from the Civil Rights era, capturing the powerful oratorical gifts of Malcolm X and the changing world of racial politics - all from the vantage point of an old debate hall on the campus of Oxford in 1964.

In Democracy's Reconstruction , the latest addition to Cathy Cohen and Fredrick Harris's Transgressing Boundaries series, noted political theorist Lawrie Balfour challenges a longstanding tendency in political theory: the disciplinary division that separates political theory proper from the study of black politics. Political theory rarely engages with black political thinkers, despite the fact that the problem of racial inequality is central to theentire enterprise of American political theory. To address this lacuna, she focuses on the political thought of W.E.B. Du Bois, particularly his longstanding concern with the relationship between slavery's legacy and the prospects for democracy in the era he lived in. Balfour utilizes Du Bois as an intellectualresource, applying his method of addressing contemporary problems via the historical prism of slavery to address some of the fundamental racial divides and inequalities in contemporary America. By establishing his theoretical method to study these historical connections, she positions Du Bois's work in the political theory canon-similar to the status it already has in history, sociology, philosophy, and literature.

Solidarity-the reciprocal relations of trust and obligation between citizens that are essential for a thriving polity-is a basic goal of all political communities. Yet it is extremely difficult to achieve, especially in multiracial societies. In an era of increasing global migration and democratization, that issue is more pressing than perhaps ever before. In the past few decades, racial diversity and the problems of justice that often accompany it have risendramatically throughout the world. It features prominently nearly everywhere: from the United States, where it has been a perennial social and political problem, to Europe, which has experienced an unprecedented influx of Muslim and African immigrants, to Latin America, where the rise of vocal black andindigenous movements has brought the question to the fore. Political theorists have long wrestled with the topic of political solidarity, but they have not had much to say about the impact of race on such solidarity, except to claim that what is necessary is to move beyond race. The prevailing approach has been: How can a multicultural and multiracial polity, with all of the different allegiances inherent in it, be transformed into a unified, liberal one? Juliet Hooker flips this question around. In multiracial and multicultural societies, she argues,the practice of political solidarity has been indelibly shaped by the social fact of race. The starting point should thus be the existence of racialized solidarity itself: How can we create political solidarity when racial and cultural diversity are more or less permanent? Unlike the tendency toclaim that the best way to deal with the problem of racism is to abandon the concept of race altogether, Hooker stresses the importance of coming to terms with racial injustice, and explores the role that it plays in both the United States and Latin America. Coming to terms with the lasting power of racial identity, she contends, is the starting point for any political project attempting to achieve solidarity.

In this fascinating treatment of 'party' life, Michael Hanchard traces the many different forms of communal expression that underlie black parties. Party/Politics reveals new dimensions to the way we think about the cultural and political sphere, both nationally and transnationally.

In Democracy Remixed, award-winning scholar Cathy J. Cohen offers an authoritative and empirically powerful analysis of the state of black youth in America today. Utilizing the results from the Black Youth Project, a groundbreaking nationwide survey, Cohen focuses on what young Black Americans actually experience and thinkΓÇöand underscores the political repercussions. Featuring stories from cities across the country, she reveals that black youth want, inlarge part, what most Americans wantΓÇöa good job, a fulfilling life, safety, respect, and equality. But while this generation has much in common with the rest of America, they also believe that equality does not yet exist, at least not in their lives. Many believe that they are treated as second-classcitizens. Moreover, for many the future seems bleak when they look at their neighborhoods, their schools, and even their own lives and choices. Through their words, these young people provide a complex and balanced picture of the intersection of opportunity and discrimination in their lives. Democracy Remixed provides the insight we need to transform the future of young Black Americans and American democracy.

In this collective biography, Rhonda Y. Williams takes us behind, and beyond, politically expedient labels to provide an incisive and intimate portrait of poor black women in urban America.

A rich and disturbing portrait of the achievement gap that persists more than fifty years after the formal dismantling of segregation

Audre Lorde was not only a famous black poet; she was also one of the most important radical black feminists of the past half century. iI Am Your Sister rcollects her non-fiction prose from 1976 to 1990, and it is the first volume to provide a full picture of Lorde's political work (as opposed to her aesthetic work). The essays cover an impressive variety of topics: sexuality, race, gender, culture, class, parenting, disease, resistance, and power-both within theUnited States and across the African diaspora. While Lorde is best known as a progenitor of black feminist studies, I Am Your Sister stresses her signal influence in the creation of gay and lesbian studies. Lorde's work presaged the late 1980s shift in the academy toward the emphasis on the tightconnections between race, class, gender, and sexuality-and later disability. Accordingly, the breadth of topics Lorde tackles in the various essays in iI Am Your Sisterr capture the spirit of intersectionality that now dominates analysis in the humanities and critical social sciences.

Race and Real Estate brings together new work by architects, sociologists, legal scholars, and literary critics that qualifies and complicates traditional narratives of race, property, and citizenship in the United States.

Nick Bromell argues in The Time is Always Now that blacks' reflections on their painful experience and their ability to advocate for people 'both black and more than black' (an Obama quote) provides us with the foundation for constructing a democracy that is less angry and more welcoming of a cosmopolitan polity.

I Am Your Sister collects Audre Lorde's non-fiction prose from 1976 to 1990, and it is the first volume to provide a full picture of Lorde's political work. The essays cover an impressive variety of topics: sexuality, race, gender, culture, class, parenting, disease, resistance, and power-both within the United States and across the African diaspora-and include her landmark works such as Sister Outsider and The Cancer Journals. The bookplaces Lorde within a continuum of black feminisits-from Sojourner Truth, to Anna Julia Cooper, Amy Jacques Garvey, Lorraine Hansberry, and Patricia Hill Collins-and concludes with personal reflections from Alice Walker, Gloria Joseph, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, and bell hooks.

Liberalism is the political philosophy of equal persons, yet liberalism has denied equality to those it saw as black sub-persons. In Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism, political philosopher Charles Mills challenges mainstream accounts that ignore this history and its current legacy in the United States today.

In London Is The Place for Me, Kennetta Hammond Perry explores how Afro-Caribbean migrants navigated the politics of race and citizenship in Britain and reconfigured the boundaries of what it meant to be both Black and British at a critical juncture in the history of Empire and twentieth century transnational race politics.

Race and Real Estate brings together new work by architects, sociologists, legal scholars, and literary critics that qualifies and complicates traditional narratives of race, property, and citizenship in the United States.