Description: The radical black left has largely disappeared from the struggle for equality and justice. Michael Dawson examines the causes and consequences, and argues that the conventional left has failed to take race seriously as a force in reshaping American institutions and civil society. Black politics needs to find its way back to its radical roots.
Brief description: Michael C. Dawson is John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago.
Review Quotes: Dawson offers a fresh interpretation of the largely unknown and often misrepresented history of black radicalism in an effort to chart a progressive path forward that will effectively challenge racial injustice, economic inequality, and imperialism. This provocative and enlightening book creatively fuses analytical history with political theory to diagnose what has ailed the American Left for decades. But it is not a pessimistic book. Rather, in the spirit of hope and possibility, it calls for utopian yet pragmatic political thinking that regards independent black political organizing not as a balkanizing force or distraction from the 'universal' fight for a democratic society, but as an indispensable element of any viable Left-wing politics.--Tommie Shelby, author of We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity