Open Wound: The Long View of Race in America - Hardcover

Evans, William McKee

3.4

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9780252034275: Open Wound: The Long View of Race in America

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0252034279 ISBN 13: 9780252034275

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2009

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In this boldly interpretive narrative, William McKee Evans tells the story of America's paradox of democracy entangled with a centuries-old system of racial oppression. This racial system of interacting practices and ideas first justified black slavery, then, after the Civil War, other forms of coerced black labor and, today, black poverty and unemployment.

At three historical moments, a crisis in the larger society opened political space for idealists to challenge the racial system: during the American Revolution, then during the "irrepressible conflict" ending in the Civil War, and, finally, during the Cold War and the colonial liberation movements. Each challenge resulted in an historic advance. But none swept clean. Many African Americans remain segregated in jobless ghettoes with dilapidated schools and dismal prospects in an increasingly polarized class society.

Evans sees a new crisis looming in a convergence of environmental disaster, endless wars, and economic collapse, which may again open space for a challenge to the racial system. African Americans, with their memory of their centuries-old struggle against oppressors, appear uniquely placed to play a central role.

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About the Author:

William McKee Evans is professor emeritus of history at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. His books include Ballots and Fence Rails: Reconstruction on the Lower Cape Fear and To Die Game: The Story of the Lowry Band, Indian Guerrillas of Reconstruction.

From Publishers Weekly:

Evans (Ballots and Fence Rails) ranges from Spanish colonization in the New World to the economic disparities of the current century in this scholarly interpretation of how racial ideas have functioned to justify inequality in the U.S. Drawing heavily on Marxist theories and the political philosophy of Antonio Gramsci, the author dissects how society in early America was divided into two racial categories, where the mark dividing the haves from the have-nots was... color. He examines the overlapping history of class and race from the American Revolution through the Civil War, but as the book nears the recent past, history is painted in large swaths, with the last half of the 20th century, including the civil rights movement, receiving scant attention. Evans's glancing look at neo-liberalism and contemporary ecological crises are downright confusing in this context, and nowhere near as explored (or explained) as the historical section of the book. While the prose is readable, the book draws heavily on political and economic theory; still, the tenacious reader will be treated to intriguing observations on the history of American race relations. (Apr.)
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