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An incisive and sympathetic examination of the case for ending the
practice of imprisonment Despite its omnipresence and long history,
imprisonment is a deeply troubling practice. In the United States
and elsewhere, prison conditions are inhumane, prisoners are
treated without dignity, and sentences are extremely harsh. Mass
incarceration and its devastating impact on black communities have
been widely condemned as neoslavery or "the new Jim Crow." Can the
practice of imprisonment be reformed, or does justice require it to
be ended altogether? In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Tommie Shelby
examines the abolitionist case against prisons and its formidable
challenge to would-be prison reformers. Philosophers have long
theorized punishment and its justifications, but they haven't paid
enough attention to incarceration or its related problems in
societies structured by racial and economic injustice. Taking up
this urgent topic, Shelby argues that prisons, once reformed and
under the right circumstances, can be legitimate and effective
tools of crime control. Yet he draws on insights from black
radicals and leading prison abolitionists, especially Angela Davis,
to argue that we should dramatically decrease imprisonment and
think beyond bars when responding to the problem of crime. While a
world without prisons might be utopian, The Idea of Prison
Abolition makes the case that we can make meaningful progress
toward this ideal by abolishing the structural injustices that too
often lead to crime and its harmful consequences.
The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory,
deadpan, to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the
European expansionism and racism of the last five hundred years,
Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged
"contract" has shaped a system of global European domination: how
it brings into existence "whites" and "non-whites," full persons
and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral
psychology; and how this system is imposed on non-whites through
ideological conditioning and violence. The Racial Contract argues
that the society we live in is a continuing white supremacist
state. As this 25th anniversary edition-featuring a foreword by
Tommy Shelbie and a new preface by the author-makes clear, the
still-urgent The Racial Contract continues to inspire, provoke, and
influence thinking about the intersection of the racist
underpinnings of political philosophy.
"Fascinating and instructive...King's philosophy, speaking to us
through the written word, may turn out to constitute his most
enduring legacy." -Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Review of Books
Martin Luther King, Jr., is one of America's most revered figures,
yet despite his mythic stature, the significance of his political
thought remains underappreciated. In this indispensable
reappraisal, leading scholars-including Cornel West, Martha
Nussbaum, and Danielle Allen-consider the substance of his lesser
known writings on racism, economic inequality, virtue ethics,
just-war theory, reparations, voting rights, civil disobedience,
and social justice and find in them an array of compelling
challenges to some of the most pressing political dilemmas of our
time. "King was not simply a compelling speaker, but a deeply
philosophical intellectual...We still have much to learn from him."
-Quartz "A compelling work of philosophy, all the more so because
it treats King seriously without inoculating him from the kind of
critique important to both his theory and practice." -Los Angeles
Review of Books
Martin Luther King, Jr., may be America’s most revered political
figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names
around the world. On the fiftieth anniversary of King’s
assassination, the man and his activism are as close to public
consciousness as ever. But despite his stature, the significance of
King’s writings and political thought remains underappreciated.
In To Shape a New World, Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry write that
the marginalization of King’s ideas reflects a romantic,
consensus history that renders the civil rights movement inherently
conservative—an effort not at radical reform but at “living up
to” enduring ideals laid down by the nation’s founders. On this
view, King marshaled lofty rhetoric to help redeem the ideas of
universal (white) heroes, but produced little original thought.
This failure to engage deeply and honestly with King’s writings
allows him to be conscripted into political projects he would not
endorse, including the pernicious form of “color blindness”
that insists, amid glaring race-based injustice, that racism has
been overcome. Cornel West, Danielle Allen, Martha Nussbaum, Robert
Gooding-Williams, and other authors join Shelby and Terry in
careful, critical engagement with King’s understudied writings on
labor and welfare rights, voting rights, racism, civil
disobedience, nonviolence, economic inequality, poverty, love,
just-war theory, virtue ethics, political theology, imperialism,
nationalism, reparations, and social justice. In King’s exciting
and learned work, the authors find an array of compelling
challenges to some of the most pressing political dilemmas of our
present, and rethink the legacy of this towering figure.
Winner of the Spitz Prize, Conference for the Study of Political
Thought Winner of the North American Society for Social Philosophy
Book Award Why do American ghettos persist? Scholars and
commentators often identify some factor-such as single motherhood,
joblessness, or violent street crime-as the key to solving the
problem and recommend policies accordingly. But, Tommie Shelby
argues, these attempts to "fix" ghettos or "help" their poor
inhabitants ignore fundamental questions of justice and fail to see
the urban poor as moral agents responding to injustice.
"Provocative...[Shelby] doesn't lay out a jobs program or a housing
initiative. Indeed, as he freely admits, he offers 'no new
political strategies or policy proposals.' What he aims to do
instead is both more abstract and more radical: to challenge the
assumption, common to liberals and conservatives alike, that
ghettos are 'problems' best addressed with narrowly targeted
government programs or civic interventions. For Shelby, ghettos are
something more troubling and less tractable: symptoms of the
'systemic injustice' of the United States. They represent not
aberrant dysfunction but the natural workings of a deeply unfair
scheme. The only real solution, in this way of thinking, is the
'fundamental reform of the basic structure of our society.'" -James
Ryerson, New York Times Book Review
Is there too much violence in hip-hop music? What's the difference
between Kimberly Jones and the artist Lil' Kim? Is hip-hop culture
a "black" thing? Is it okay for N.W.A. to call themselves niggaz
and for Dave Chappelle to call everybody bitches? These witty,
provocative essays ponder these and other thorny questions, linking
the searing cultural issues implicit -- and often explicit -- in
hip-hop to the weighty matters examined by the great philosophers
of the past. The book shows that rap classics by Lauryn Hill,
OutKast, and the Notorious B.I.G. can help uncover the meanings of
love articulated in Plato's "Symposium; that Rakim, 2Pac, and Nas
can shed light on the conception of God's essence expressed in St.
Thomas Aquinas's "Summa Theologica; and explores the connection
between Run-D.M.C., Snoop Dogg, and Hegel. "Hip-Hop and Philosophy
proves that rhyme and reason, far from being incompatible, can be
mixed and mastered to contemplate life's most profound mysteries.
African American history resounds with calls for black unity. From
abolitionist times through the Black Power movement, it was widely
seen as a means of securing a full share of America's promised
freedom and equality. Yet today, many believe that black solidarity
is unnecessary, irrational, rooted in the illusion of "racial"
difference, at odds with the goal of integration, and incompatible
with liberal ideals and American democracy. A response to such
critics, We Who Are Dark provides the first extended philosophical
defense of black political solidarity. Tommie Shelby argues that we
can reject a biological idea of race and agree with many criticisms
of identity politics yet still view black political solidarity as a
needed emancipatory tool. In developing his defense of black
solidarity, he draws on the history of black political thought,
focusing on the canonical figures of Martin R. Delany and W. E. B.
Du Bois, and he urges us to rethink many traditional conceptions of
what black unity should entail. In this way, he contributes
significantly to the larger effort to re-envision black politics
and to modernize the objectives and strategies of black freedom
struggles for the post-civil rights era. His book articulates a new
African American political philosophy--one that rests firmly on
anti-essentialist foundations and, at the same time, urges a
commitment to defeating racism, to eliminating racial inequality,
and to improving the opportunities of those racialized as "black."
The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory,
deadpan, to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the
European expansionism and racism of the last five hundred years,
Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged
"contract" has shaped a system of global European domination: how
it brings into existence "whites" and "non-whites," full persons
and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral
psychology; and how this system is imposed on non-whites through
ideological conditioning and violence. The Racial Contract argues
that the society we live in is a continuing white supremacist
state. As this 25th anniversary edition-featuring a foreword by
Tommy Shelbie and a new preface by the author-makes clear, the
still-urgent The Racial Contract continues to inspire, provoke, and
influence thinking about the intersection of the racist
underpinnings of political philosophy.
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