ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shares the view that the New Liberalism is part of an emergent orthodoxy on race and inequality that is wrongheaded and intellectually inadequate, as well as dangerous and politically retrograde. It proposes policy and strategic directions consistent with that account and argues concretely and forcefully for the need to maintain and expand the struggle against racial inequality as an element of a larger struggle against social injustice and for a more humane world. The book lays out a critical overview of the racialized origins and basis of the segmented welfare state that emerged from the New Deal, and provides a similarly fine-grained argument regarding the history of federal urban policy. It examines instances of the New Liberalism's current approaches to social welfare and urban policy—the obscene debacle of the 1996 welfare reform and contemporary initiatives in urban redevelopment policy.
