The late 1980s ushered in a new era of black politics, the socioeconomic transition era. Coming on the heels of the protest era and politics era, the current stage is characterized by the emergence of a new black middle class that came of age after the Civil Rights struggle. Although class still isn’t a strong factor in the external politics of the black community, it is increasingly a wedge issue in the community’s internal politics. Black politics today is increasingly less about the interest of the larger group and more about the interest of smaller subgroups within the community. Theodore J. Davis Jr. argues that the greatest threat to the social and political cohesiveness of the so-called black community may be the rise of a socially and economically privileged group among the ranks of black America. This rift has affected blacks’ ability to organize effectively and influence politics. Davis traces the changes in economic status, public opinion, political power and participation, and leadership over three generations of black politics. The result is an insightful analysis of black politics today.

Black Politics in Transition considers the impact of three transformative forces—immigration, suburbanization, and gentrification—on Black politics today. Demographic changes resulting from immigration and ethnic blending are dramatically affecting the character and identity of Black populations throughout the US. Black Americans are becoming more ethnically diverse at the same time that they are sharing space with newcomers from near and far. In addition, the movement of Black populations out of the cities to which they migrated a generation ago—a reverse migration to the American South, in some cases, and in other cases a movement from cities to suburbs shifts the locus of Black politics. At the same time, middle class and white populations are returning to cities, displacing low income Blacks and immigrants alike in a renewal of gentrification. All this makes for an important laboratory of discovery among social scientists, including the diverse range of authors represented here. Drawing on a wide array of disciplinary perspectives and methodological strategies, original chapters analyze the geography of opportunity for Black Americans and Black politics in accessible, jargon-free language. Moving beyond the Black–white binary, this book explores the tri-part relationship among Blacks, whites, and Latinos as well. Some of the most important developments in Black politics are happening at state and local levels today, and this book captures that for students, scholars, and citizens engaged in this dynamic milieu.

Reflects on black politics in America and what it will take to to see equality.

Over the past several years scholars, activists, and analysts have begun to examine the growing divide between the wealthy and the rest of us, suggesting that the divide can be traced to the neoliberal turn. "I'm not a business man; I'm a business, man." Perhaps no better statement gets at the heart of this turn. Increasingly we're being forced to think of ourselves in entrepreneurial terms, forced to take more and more responsibility for developing our "human capital." Furthermore a range of institutions from churches to schools to entire cities have been remade, restructured to in order to perform like businesses. Finally, even political concepts like freedom, and democracy have been significantly altered. As a result we face higher levels of inequality than any other time over the last century. In Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics, Lester K. Spence writes the first book length effort to chart the effects of this transformation on African American communities, in an attempt to revitalize the black political imagination. Rather than asking black men and women to "hustle harder" Spence criticizes the act of hustling itself as a tactic used to demobilize and disempower the communities most in need of empowerment.

When Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, Atlanta had the South's largest population of college-educated African Americans. The dictates of Jim Crow meant that these men and women were almost entirely excluded from public life, but as Karen Ferguson demonstrates, Roosevelt's New Deal opened unprecedented opportunities for black Atlantans struggling to achieve full citizenship. Black reformers, often working within federal agencies as social workers and administrators, saw the inclusion of African Americans in New Deal social welfare programs as a chance to prepare black Atlantans to take their rightful place in the political and social mainstream. They also worked to build a constituency they could mobilize for civil rights, in the process facilitating a shift from elite reform to the mass mobilization that marked the postwar black freedom struggle. Although these reformers' efforts were an essential prelude to civil rights activism, Ferguson argues that they also had lasting negative repercussions, embedded as they were in the politics of respectability. By attempting to impose bourgeois behavioral standards on the black community, elite reformers stratified it into those they determined deserving to participate in federal social welfare programs and those they consigned to remain at the margins of civic life.

In Democracy Remixed, award-winning scholar Cathy J. Cohen offers an authoritative and empirically powerful analysis of the state of black youth in America today. Utilizing the results from the Black Youth Project, a groundbreaking nationwide survey, Cohen focuses on what young Black Americans actually experience and think--and underscores the political repercussions. Featuring stories from cities across the country, she reveals that black youth want, in large part, what most Americans want--a good job, a fulfilling life, safety, respect, and equality. But while this generation has much in common with the rest of America, they also believe that equality does not yet exist, at least not in their lives. Many believe that they are treated as second-class citizens. Moreover, for many the future seems bleak when they look at their neighborhoods, their schools, and even their own lives and choices. Through their words, these young people provide a complex and balanced picture of the intersection of opportunity and discrimination in their lives. Democracy Remixed provides the insight we need to transform the future of young Black Americans and American democracy.

Solidarity--the reciprocal relations of trust and obligation between citizens that are essential for a thriving polity--is a basic goal of all political communities. Yet it is extremely difficult to achieve, especially in multiracial societies. In an era of increasing global migration and democratization, that issue is more pressing than perhaps ever before. In the past few decades, racial diversity and the problems of justice that often accompany it have risen dramatically throughout the world. It features prominently nearly everywhere: from the United States, where it has been a perennial social and political problem, to Europe, which has experienced an unprecedented influx of Muslim and African immigrants, to Latin America, where the rise of vocal black and indigenous movements has brought the question to the fore. Political theorists have long wrestled with the topic of political solidarity, but they have not had much to say about the impact of race on such solidarity, except to claim that what is necessary is to move beyond race. The prevailing approach has been: How can a multicultural and multiracial polity, with all of the different allegiances inherent in it, be transformed into a unified, liberal one? Juliet Hooker flips this question around. In multiracial and multicultural societies, she argues, the practice of political solidarity has been indelibly shaped by the social fact of race. The starting point should thus be the existence of racialized solidarity itself: How can we create political solidarity when racial and cultural diversity are more or less permanent? Unlike the tendency to claim that the best way to deal with the problem of racism is to abandon the concept of race altogether, Hooker stresses the importance of coming to terms with racial injustice, and explores the role that it plays in both the United States and Latin America. Coming to terms with the lasting power of racial identity, she contends, is the starting point for any political project attempting to achieve solidarity.