Description: "What is happening to the politics of race in America? In America's New Racial Battle Lines: Protect versus Repair, Rogers Smith and Desmond King argue that the nation has entered a new, more severely polarized era of racial policy disputes, displacing older debates over color-blind versus race-targeted measures. Drawing on primary sources, interviews, and studies of federal, state, and local initiatives linked to global developments, the authors map the memberships and the goals of two rival racial policy alliances, comprised of grassroots activists, NGOs, government agencies, and wealthy funders on both sides. Today's conservatives promise to "protect" traditionalist Americans against assaults from what they see as a radical American Left. Today's progressives seek to "repair" all American institutions and practices that embody systemic racism. Though these sides have some common ground, they advance sharply opposed visions of America that threaten to make profound racial policy conflicts, sometimes erupting into violence, all too pervasive in the nation's present and future"--
Brief description: Rogers M. Smith is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Review Quotes: "Theoretically rich and meticulously argued, America's New Racial Battle Lines is the book we all need to read over and over again. Two of the deepest thinkers on race and American politics illustrate how racial institutional orders have fundamentally shifted and what this evolution means for the future of the nation."--Megan Ming Francis author of "Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State"