ABSTRACT

Race has been present at every critical moment in American political development, shaping political institutions, political discourse, public policy, and its denizens’ political identities. But because of the nature of race—its evolving and dynamic status as a structure of inequality, a political organizing principle, an ideology, and a system of power—we must study the politics of race historically, institutionally, and discursively.

Covering more than three hundred years of American political history from the founding to the contemporary moment, the contributors in this volume make this extended argument. Together, they provide an understanding of American politics that challenges our conventional disciplinary tools of studying politics and our conservative political moment’s dominant narrative of racial progress. This volume, the first to collect essays on the role of race in American political history and development, resituates race in American politics as an issue for sustained and broadened critical attention.

chapter 1|30 pages

Race and American political development

ByJOSEPH LOWNDES, JULIE NOVKOV, DORIAN T. WARREN

chapter 2|28 pages

Race and the dual state in the early American republic

ByRICHARD YOUNG, JEFFREY MEISER

chapter 4|26 pages

Racial orders in American political development

ByDESMOND S. KING, ROGERS M. SMITH

chapter 6|30 pages

Reconstruction, race, and revolution

ByPAMELA BRANDWEIN

chapter 7|25 pages

Jim Crow reform and the democratization of the south

ByKIMBERLEY S. JOHNSON

chapter 12|24 pages

The triumph of racial liberalism, the demise of racial justice

ByDANIEL MARTINEZ-HOSANG