Marek Kohn examines the resurgent racialism in science in a timely expose. The ideas, which exploit anxieties about race and social breakdown and their defenders, are analysed in this book."

'I have never read such a stimulating short guide to art' Lynn Barber, Sunday Times Now Grayson Perry is a fully paid-up member of the art establishment, he wants to show that any of us can appreciate art (after all, there is a reason he's called this book Playing to the Gallery and not 'Sucking up to an Academic Elite'). Based on his hugely popular BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures and full of pictures, this funny, personal journey through the art world answers the basic questions that might occur to us in an art gallery but seem too embarrassing to ask.

The most comprehensive volume devoted to the life and work of pioneering African American artist Robert Colescott, accompanying the largest traveling exhibition of his work ever mounted. Robert Colescott (1925-2009) was a trailblazing artist, whose august career was as unique as his singular artistic style. Known for figurative satirical paintings that exposed the ugly ironies of race in America from the 1970s through the late 1990s, his work was profoundly influential to the generations of artists that have followed him, such as Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley, and Henry Taylor, among many others. This volume surveys the entirety of Colescott's body of work, with contributions by more than ten curators and writers, including a substantive essay by the show's cocurator, the renowned Lowery Stokes Sims. It provides a detailed stylistic analysis of his politically inflected oeuvre, focusing on Colescott's own consideration of his work in the context of the grand traditions of European painting and contemporary polemic. In addition, the book features reminiscences and thought pieces by a variety of family, friends, students, curators, dealers, and scholars on his work as well as a selection of writings by the artist himself. Relying on previously unpublished transcripts of lectures, reviews, and archival materials provided by institutions and individuals, the book will provide a fuller story of the artist's life and career.

Frank, fearless letters from poets of all colors, genders, classes about the material conditions under which their art is made.

A “provocative, disturbing, important” look at how society’s obsession with athletic achievement undermines African Americans (The New York Times). Very few pastimes in America cross racial, regional, cultural, and economic boundaries the way sports do. From the near-religious respect for Sunday Night Football to obsessions with stars like Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, and Michael Jordan, sports are as much a part of our national DNA as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But hidden within this reverence—shared by the media, corporate America, even the athletes themselves—is a dark narrative of division, social pathology, and racism. In Darwin’s Athletes, John Hoberman takes a controversial look at the profound and disturbing effect that the worship of sports, and specifically of black players, has on national race relations. From exposing the perpetuation of stereotypes of African American violence and criminality to examining the effect that athletic dominance has on perceptions of intelligence to delving into misconceptions of racial biology, Hoberman tackles difficult questions about the sometimes subtle ways that bigotry can be reinforced, and the nature of discrimination. An important discussion on sports, cultural attitudes, and dangerous prejudices, Darwin’s Athletes is a “provocative book” that serves as required reading in the ongoing debate of America’s racial divide (Publishers Weekly).

Living in a segregated society, white Americans learn about African Americans through the images the media show. This text offers a look at the racial patterns in the mass media and how they shape the ambivalent attitudes of whites toward blacks.

Of the many obstacles to racial justice in America, none has received more recent attention than the one that lurks in our subconscious. As social movements and policing scandals have shown how far from being “postracial” we are, the concept of implicit bias has taken center stage in the national conversation about race. Millions of Americans have taken online tests purporting to show the deep, invisible roots of their own prejudice. A recent Oxford study that claims to have found a drug that reduces implicit bias is only the starkest example of a pervasive trend. But what do we risk when we seek the simplicity of a technological diagnosis—and solution—for racism? What do we miss when we locate racism in our biology and our brains rather than in our history and our social practices? In Race on the Brain, Jonathan Kahn argues that implicit bias has grown into a master narrative of race relations—one with profound, if unintended, negative consequences for law, science, and society. He emphasizes its limitations, arguing that while useful as a tool to understand particular types of behavior, it is only one among several tools available to policy makers. An uncritical embrace of implicit bias, to the exclusion of power relations and structural racism, undermines wider civic responsibility for addressing the problem by turning it over to experts. Technological interventions, including many tests for implicit bias, are premised on a color-blind ideal and run the risk of erasing history, denying present reality, and obscuring accountability. Kahn recognizes the significance of implicit social cognition but cautions against seeing it as a panacea for addressing America’s longstanding racial problems. A bracing corrective to what has become a common-sense understanding of the power of prejudice, Race on the Brain challenges us all to engage more thoughtfully and more democratically in the difficult task of promoting racial justice.