How race shapes expectations about whose losses matter In
democracies, citizens must accept loss; we can’t always be on the
winning side. But in the United States, the fundamental civic
capacity of being able to lose is not distributed equally. Propped
up by white supremacy, whites (as a group) are accustomed to
winning; they have generally been able to exercise political rule
without having to accept sharing it. Black citizens, on the other
hand, are expected to be political heroes whose civic suffering
enables progress toward racial justice. In this book, Juliet
Hooker, a leading thinker on democracy and race, argues that the
two most important forces driving racial politics in the United
States today are Black grief and white grievance. Black grief is
exemplified by current protests against police violence—the
latest in a tradition of violent death and subsequent public
mourning spurring Black political mobilization. The potent politics
of white grievance, meanwhile, which is also not new, imagines the
United States as a white country under siege. Drawing on African
American political thought, Hooker examines key moments in US
racial politics that illuminate the problem of loss in democracy.
She connects today’s Black Lives Matter protests to the use of
lynching photographs to arouse public outrage over
post–Reconstruction era racial terror, and she discusses Emmett
Till’s funeral as a catalyst for the civil rights struggles of
the 1950s and 1960s. She also traces the political weaponization of
white victimhood during the Obama and Trump presidencies. Calling
for an expansion of Black and white political imaginations, Hooker
argues that both must learn to sit with loss, for different reasons
and to different ends.
General
Imprint: |
Princeton University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
October 2023 |
First published: |
2023 |
Authors: |
Juliet Hooker
|
Dimensions: |
216 x 140mm (L x W) |
Format: |
Hardcover
|
Pages: |
360 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-691-24303-0 |
Categories: |
Books
Promotions
|
LSN: |
0-691-24303-4 |
Barcode: |
9780691243030 |
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!