Over 40 years ago the historic Kerner Commission Report declared that America was undergoing an urban crisis whose effects were disproportionately felt by underclass populations. In America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-blind Politics, Curtis Ivery and Joshua Bassett explore the persistence of this crisis today, despite public beliefs that America has become a "post-racial" nation after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Ivery and Bassett combine their own experience in the fields of civil rights and education with the knowledge of more than 20 experts in the field of urban studies to provide an accessible overview of the theories of the urban underclass and how they affect America's urban crisis. This engaging look into the still-present racial politics in America's cities adds significantly to the existing scholarship on the urban underclass by discussing the role of the prison-industrial complex in sustaining the urban crisis as well as the importance of the concept of multiracial democracy to the future of American politics and society. America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-blind Politics encourages the reader not only to be aware of persisting racial inequalities, but to actively engage in efforts to respond to them.

Northern whites in the post–World War II era began to support the principle of civil rights, so why did many of them continue to oppose racial integration in their communities? Challenging conventional wisdom about the growth, prosperity, and racial exclusivity of American suburbs, David M. P. Freund argues that previous attempts to answer this question have overlooked a change in the racial thinking of whites and the role of suburban politics in effecting this change. In Colored Property, he shows how federal intervention spurred a dramatic shift in the language and logic of residential exclusion—away from invocations of a mythical racial hierarchy and toward talk of markets, property, and citizenship. Freund begins his exploration by tracing the emergence of a powerful public-private alliance that facilitated postwar suburban growth across the nation with federal programs that significantly favored whites. Then, showing how this national story played out in metropolitan Detroit, he visits zoning board and city council meetings, details the efforts of neighborhood “property improvement” associations, and reconstructs battles over race and housing to demonstrate how whites learned to view discrimination not as an act of racism but as a legitimate response to the needs of the market. Illuminating government’s powerful yet still-hidden role in the segregation of U.S. cities, Colored Property presents a dramatic new vision of metropolitan growth, segregation, and white identity in modern America.

The reasons behind Detroit’s persistent racialized poverty after World War II Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit is now the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America’s racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today’s urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II. This Princeton Classics edition includes a new preface by Sugrue, discussing the lasting impact of the postwar transformation on urban America and the chronic issues leading to Detroit’s bankruptcy.

Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit over the last fifty years has become the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of racial and economic inequality in modern America, Thomas Sugrue explains how Detroit and many other once prosperous industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Probing beneath the veneer of 1950s prosperity and social consensus, Sugrue traces the rise of a new ghetto, solidified by changes in the urban economy and labor market and by racial and class segregation. In this provocative revision of postwar American history, Sugrue finds cities already fiercely divided by race and devastated by the exodus of industries. He focuses on urban neighborhoods, where white working-class homeowners mobilized to prevent integration as blacks tried to move out of the crumbling and overcrowded inner city. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today's urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II. In a new preface, Sugrue discusses the ongoing legacies of the postwar transformation of urban America and engages recent scholars who have joined in the reassessment of postwar urban, political, social, and African American history.

This edited volume analyzes a little-known but important juncture in the history of racial integration and public education during the Obama administration through the advent of the Trump administration, which also marks a significant transition of US racial politics and race relations from its foundations in civil rights movements of the 1950s/60s. Focusing on the City of Detroit, which via the historic Supreme Court case, Milliken v. Bradley, stands as the central site of analysis for these broader national dynamics of race, education, and integration—what we term as a “new political economy of integration”—this volume offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the critical role integration must play in the project of America becoming a multiracial democracy as US populations continue to grow more diverse and will soon transform the nation into a multiracial majority for the first time in its history.

The book is divided into two major sections: (1) “Reclaiming Integration”; (2) “Reclaiming the Language of Race.” Both sections are located in the context of the “post-racial” era and analyzed by nationally renowned scholars in various dimensions. The purpose of this organization is to link structural efforts to encourage voluntary integration with discursive efforts to broaden our social understanding of race in ways that advance the project of American democracy. It is our firm belief that we cannot achieve meaningful advances against enduring racial inequalities without linking structural impacts of racialization (e.g., racial inequalities in economics, education, healthcare, etc.) to the social discourse of race, specifically in terms of the rejection of post-racial politics that are based on the false idea that racism and discrimination are no longer obstacles to opportunity in the United States.

Elections in America provides a thorough and objective explanation of American elections at the local, state, and national levels. It discusses laws and practices that govern elections, the history of elections and voting rights, and contemporary voting controversies. Elections in America is an all-in-one resource for understanding the many facets of elections and voting trends since the United States came into being. It explains how, when, and why the franchise expanded in fits and starts after America's founding and the various controversies over voting rights and vote counting that swirl around elections today. It reviews the major landmark court decisions that have impacted electoral politics, discusses how America's two-party system has shaped elections, and provides information on major organizations, groups, and people battling over voting rights and election laws. In addition, this resource provides a suite of original essays from election scholars on different aspects of U.S. electoral politics, as well as a carefully curated selection of primary documents illuminating important developments in American election history. The book also contains a comprehensive annotated list of academic resources to guide the reader towards further research on topics of interest.