Race Still Matters: The Reality of African American Lives and the Myth of Postracial Society

Description

Essays debunking the notion that contemporary America is a colorblind society. More than half a century after the civil rights era of the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, American society is often characterized as postracial. In other words, that the country has moved away from prejudice based on skin color and we live in a colorblind society. The reality, however, is the opposite. African Americans continue to face both explicit and latent discriminations in housing, healthcare, education, and every facet of their lives. Recent cases involving law enforcement officers shooting unarmed Black men also attest to the reality: the problem of the twenty-first century is still the problem of the color line. In Race Still Matters, contributors drawn from a wide array of disciplines use multidisciplinary methods to explore topics such as Black family experiences, hate crimes, race and popular culture, residual discrimination, economic and occupational opportunity gaps, healthcare disparities, education, law enforcement issues, youth culture, and the depiction of Black female athletes. The volume offers irrefutable evidence that race still very much matters in the United States today. Yuya Kiuchi is Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Michigan State University and the author of Struggles for Equal Voice: The History of African American Media Democracy, also published by SUNY Press. Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Part 1. Race 1. Reverse Racism: A Discursive History Tad Suiter 2. “The Struggle is Real out Here”: The Contextual Reality of Being Black Couples and Families in America Karlin J. Tichenor 3. Holy Smoke: Church Burnings, Journalism, and the Politics of Race, 1996–2006 Christopher Strain 4. Fear of a Black President: Conspiracy Theory and Racial Paranoia in Obamerica Travis L. Gosa and Danielle Porter Sanchez Part 2. Structural Inequality 5. From Orchards to Silicon Valley: African American Suburbanization in the U.S. West, the Black San Jose Model, 1945–2010 Herb Ruffin II 6. African American Economic Experiences: Income, Occupations, Savings, Investments, and Social Security Trends since 2000 LaToya T. Brackett 7. Confronting an Enduring Legacy: Health-Care Workforce Disparity Costellia H. Talley and Henry C. Talley Part 3. African American Youth 8. Sustained Inequality: African American Education in a “Postracial” Nation Daniel R. Davis 9. “Nothing We Could Do or Say”: African American Young Men’s Lived Police Experiences Rod K. Brunson and Amanda D’Souza 10. African American Youth and the Postracial Societal Myth Carl S. Taylor and Pamela R. Smith Part 4. Popular Culture 11. Leave the Prejudice, Take the Power: Crash, Fruitvale Station, and Race in Hollywood in the Twenty-First Century Justin Gomer 12. African American Female Athletic Image: What We Should Take Away from the London 2012 Olympic Games Rachel L. Myers 13. An Obama Effect? African American Voting Behavior and the Political Symbolism of a Black President David C. Wilson, Samantha S. Kelley, Emmanuel Balogun, Christian Solar, and Sahar Salehi Contributors Index