Brendan O'Flaherty, The Economics of Race in the United States (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2016) (From the book jacket: "Brendan O'Flaherty brings the tools of economic analysis--incentives, equilibrium, optimization, and more--to bear on counties issues of race in the United States. In areas ranging form quality of health care and education, to employment opportunities and housing, to levels of wealth and crime, he shows how racial differences among blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans remains a powerful determinant in the lives of twenty-first-century Americans. ore capacious than standard texts, The Economics of Race in the United States discusses important aspects of history and culture and explores race as a social and biological construct to make a compelling argument why race must play a major role uneconomic and public policy. People are not color-blind, and so policies cannot be color-blind either. "Because his book addresses many topics, not just a single area such as labor or housing, surprising threads of connection emerge in the course of O'Flaherty's analysis. For example, eliminating discrimination in the workplace will not equalize earnings as long as educational achievement will vary by race, No single engine of racial equality in one area of social and economic life is strong enough to pull the entire train by itself. Progress in one place is often constrained by demising marginal returns in another. Good policies can make a difference and only careful analysis can figure out which policies those are." From the text: "What do scientists now believe about racial essentialism? Bottom line: they believe it's wrong." Id. at 27. "What is race? Races are labels that come from history. Races create a partition of people based (to a great extent) on ancestry, with some genetic correlation, and that partition affects how people think about themselves and how others think about them. Race is part of a person's identity. It is both individual and social. People base their actions on their race and on the races of the people they encounter." Id. at 45. "In The Souls of Black Folks in 1903, W. E. B. DuBois wrote that 'the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.' A century later, the color line looks a lot different than it looked then, but it hasn't gone away. To understand U.S. society and the U.S. economy in the twenty-first century (whether or not you are an American), you still have to understand race. If you are an American, to understand yourself in the twenty-first century you have to understand race. I hope this book has helped you do that." Id. at 432. Personally, it has been quite a long time since I have encountered anyone I considered "good on race." Perhaps reading this book will assist people to be, if not good on race, at least better on race.).
Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race ing a Modern American City (Ithaca & London: Cornell U. Press, 2001) (From the book jacket: "America's urbanites have engaged in many tumultuous struggles for civil and workers rights since the Second World War. Heather Ann Thompson focuses in detail on the struggles of Motor City residents during the 1960s and early 1970s and find that conflict continued to plague the inner city and its workplaces even after Great Society liberals committed themselves to improving conditions." "Using the contested urban center of Detroit as a model, Thompson assesses the role of such upheaval in shaping the future of America's cities. She argues that the glaring persistence of injustice and inequality led directly to explosions of unrest in this period. Thompson finds that unrest as dramatic as that witnessed during Detroit's infamous riot of 1967 by no means doomed the inner city, nor in any way sealed its fate. The politics of liberalism, continued to serve as a catalyst for both polarization and radical new possibilities and Detroit remained a contested, and thus politically vibrant, urban center." ).
