Using arresting case studies of how ordinary people understand the concepts of race, class, and gender, Celine-Marie Pascale shows that the peculiarity of commonsense is that it imposes obviousness—that which we cannot fail to recognize. As a result, how we negotiate the challenges of inequality in the twenty-first century may depend less on what people consciously think about "difference" and more on what we inadvertently assume. Through an analysis of commonsense knowledge, Pascale expertly provides new insights into familiar topics. In addition, by analyzing local practices in the context of established cultural discourses, Pascale shows how the weight of history bears on the present moment, both enabling and constraining possibilities. Pascale tests the boundaries of sociological knowledge and offers new avenues for conceptualizing social change. In 2008, Making Sense of Race, Class and Gender was the recipient of the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award, of the American Sociological Association Section on Race, Gender, and Class, for "distinguished and significant contribution to the development of the integrative field of race, gender, and class."

This work examines race, class, and the mechanics of inequality in the US, focusing on Kentucky and its political and social transformation from slavery, sharecropping, and Jim Crow through the populist era, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and the state's integration into the global economy. The author combines sociological insight with her own personal narrative to illustrate the ways in which constructions of race and the promise of white privilege have been used in two Kentucky counties to divide working class people. Buck teaches anthropology and sociology at a college in Kentucky. c. Book News Inc.

From one of our most important scholars and civil rights activist icon, a powerful study of the women’s liberation movement and the tangled knot of oppression facing Black women. “Angela Davis is herself a woman of undeniable courage. She should be heard.”—The New York Times Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. While Black women were aided by some activists like Sarah and Angelina Grimke and the suffrage cause found unwavering support in Frederick Douglass, many women played on the fears of white supremacists for political gain rather than take an intersectional approach to liberation. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women’s rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger’s racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable work.

Using the East Baltimore community as an example this book examines historical and current rebuilding practices in abandoned communities in urban America, their structural causes, and outcomes on the health of the place and the people. The role of community organizing as a necessary means to assure benefit during and after resident displacement, its challenges and successes, are described in the context of a current eminent domain-driven rebuilding project in East Baltimore.

Race, Class, and the Postindustrial City thoroughly explores the scholarship of William Julius Wilson, one of the nation's leading sociologists and public intellectuals, and the controversies surrounding his work. In addressing the connection between postindustrial cities and changing race relations, the author, who is not related to William Julius Wilson, shows how Wilson has synthesized competing theories of race relations, urban sociology, and public policy into a refocused liberal analysis of postindustrial America. Combining intellectual biography, the sociology of knowledge, and theoretical analyses of sociological debates relevant to African Americans, this book provides both appraisal and critique, ultimately assessing Wilson's contribution to the sociological canon.

Race is arguably the most profound and enduring cleavage in American society and politics. This book examines the sources and dynamics of the race cleavage in American society through a detailed analysis of intergroup and intragroup differences at the level of mass opinion. The ethclass theory, which examines the intersection of ethnicity and class, is used to analyze interracial differences in mass attitudes. This analysis yields three clusters of opinion that distinguish African Americans from whites — religiosity, interpersonal alienation, and political liberalism. The authors then examine the intragroup sources of these opinion differences among blacks in terms of class, gender, age, region, and religion. While the authors demonstrate an embryonic trend of more black middle class opinion agreement with whites, the book confirms the ethclass character of the black experience whereby race and race consciousness are still more significant than class in shaping black attitudes. Given the growing class bifurcation in black America and the continuing debate about its significance in shaping black attitudes and behavior, this book offers a refreshing new analysis of the homogeneity as well as heterogeneity of black mass public opinion.