The American West is often seen from the historical accounts recorded from the beginning of the Civil War to after the Reconstruction Era. Many of the accounts include historians that promote a European/Anglo-Saxon perspective; these accounts have often led readers to stereotypical perspectives concerning minorities. These accounts also give birth to the “white savior” concept in which white men assume the role as savior to lesser races in movies, such as saving the African Americans during slavery or in the case of many White Westerners: being the hero to Native American people. Hollywood’s portrayal of Westerners did not happen by accident, but many historians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries purposely ignored the accounts and contributions of other races. The narrative trope of the white savior is one way the mass communications medium of cinema represents the sociology of race and ethnic relations, by presenting abstract concepts such as morality as characteristics innate, racially and culturally, to white people, not to be found in non-white people. In other words, had Hollywood sought accurate information and represented it in the narratives for shows like The Lone Ranger, the show would have been cast with an African American actor since the role was based solely on the life of black lawman, Bass Reeves. A White Savior film is often based on some supposedly true story. Second, it features a nonwhite group or person who experiences conflict and struggle with others that is particularly dangerous or threatening to their life and livelihood.

"The West, especially the Intermountain states, ranks among the whitest places in America, but this fact obscures the more complicated history of racial diversity in the region. In Making the White Man's West, author Jason E. Pierce argues that since the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the American West has been a racially contested space. Using a nuanced theory of historical 'whiteness, ' he examines why and how Anglo-Americans dominated the region for a 120-year period. In the early nineteenth century, critics like Zebulon Pike and Washington Irving viewed the West as a 'dumping ground' for free blacks and Native Americans, a place where they could be segregated from the white communities east of the Mississippi River. But as immigrant populations and industrialization took hold in the East, white Americans began to view the West as a 'refuge for real whites.' The West had the most diverse population in the nation with substantial numbers of American Indians, Hispanics, and Asians, but Anglo-Americans could control these mostly disenfranchised peoples and enjoy the privileges of power while celebrating their presence as providing a unique regional character. From this came the belief in a White Man's West, a place ideally suited for 'real' Americans in the face of changing world. The first comprehensive study to examine the construction of white racial identity in the West, Making the White Man's West shows how these two visions of the West--as a racially diverse holding cell and a white refuge--shaped the history of the region and influenced a variety of contemporary social issues in the West today"--

This book looks at the movement of urban American blacks into the Midwest through the experience of Iowa City, a town desperately trying to redefine itself. Pressing questions have plagued the community for decades: Why are people from Chicago coming here? Who gets to define community identity? Who makes decisions on housing, employment and education? Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

"An enthralling work that will be essential reading for years to come." —David Nicholson, Washington Post A landmark history of African Americans in the West, In Search of the Racial Frontier rescues the collective American consciousness from thinking solely of European pioneers when considering the exploration, settling, and conquest of the territory west of the Mississippi. From its surprising discussions of groups of African American wholly absorbed into Native American culture to illustrating how the largely forgotten role of blacks in the West helped contribute to everything from the Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation ruling to the rise of the Black Panther Party, Quintard Taylor fills a major void in American history and reminds us that the African American experience is unlimited by region or social status.

Why have so many central and inner cities in Europe, North America and Australia been so radically revamped in the last three decades, converting urban decay into new chic? Will the process continue in the twenty-first century or has it ended? What does this mean for the people who live there? Can they do anything about it? This book challenges conventional wisdom, which holds gentrification to be the simple outcome of new middle-class tastes and a demand for urban living. It reveals gentrification as part of a much larger shift in the political economy and culture of the late twentieth century. Documenting in gritty detail the conflicts that gentrification brings to the new urban 'frontiers', the author explores the interconnections of urban policy, patterns of investment, eviction, and homelessness. The failure of liberal urban policy and the end of the 1980s financial boom have made the end-of-the-century city a darker and more dangerous place. Public policy and the private market are conspiring against minorities, working people, the poor, and the homeless as never before. In the emerging revanchist city, gentrification has become part of this policy of revenge.