Reckoning with Race is a firsthand account of race relations in America from award-winning journalist, author, and former CNN commentator, Rick Allen. Allen's collection of essays shows the progress our country has made—and how much further we have to go. In his fifty-year career as an award-winning journalist, CNN commentator, and author of multiple books, Rick Allen has had a front-row seat on dramatic change in race relations in America. In Reckoning with Race, a collection of eighteen essays, he explores his ongoing efforts to understand the struggle of black and white Americans to navigate a shared history at once wicked and intimate, full of love and hate, as they seek to level an uneven playing field. Allen examines issues from the era of Reconstruction through Jim Crow, the Civil Rights movement, the rhythms of resistance and progress, into today’s contentious debates over redlining, reparations, and critical race theory. Starting as a reporter with the Atlanta Constitution in 1972, Allen got to know and befriend legendary black political figures including Julian Bond, John Lewis, Andy Young, Hosea Williams, Maynard Jackson, Jesse Jackson, and Daddy King, the father of Martin Luther King, Jr. He also encountered ardent white segregationists, some of whom saw the light and others who took their racism to the grave. Drawing on his experience covering politics, he examines presidents from LBJ and Jimmy Carter to Obama and Trump. He explores the symbolism of Confederate flags, the controversy over Uncle Remus, the election of Atlanta’s first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, and the tragic case of the Atlanta Child Murders. He has had first-hand encounters with white supremacy and violent black protest alike. Throughout Reckoning with Race, Allen is candid about his own shortcomings as a white native Northerner learning gradually about the complexities of race in his adoptive South. The essays highlight his continuing journey toward understanding the forces that both hinder and promote equality and harmony between the races.

Drawing from the lived experiences of Black parents as they engaged with their children’s K–12 schools, this book brings a critical race theory (CRT) analysis to family-school partnerships. The author examines persistent racism and white supremacy at school, Black parents’ resistance, and ways school communities can engage in more authentic partnerships with Black and Brown families. The children in this study attended schools with varying demographics and reputations. Their parents were engaged in these schools in the highly visible ways educators and policymakers traditionally say is important for children’s education, such as proactively communicating with teachers, helping with homework, and joining PTOs. The author argues that, because of the relentless anti-Black racism Black families experience in schools, educators must depart from race-evasive approaches and commit to more liberatory family-school partnerships. Book Features: Includes an introduction to CRT and explains how it informed this study.Draws from Derrick Bell’s notion of racial realism to make sense of Black parent participants advocating for high-quality education in the context of persistent anti-Black racism.Examines how Black parents resisted individualism and were, instead, committed to improving the education of all marginalized children.Shows how white supremacy operated in shared school governance despite schools having inclusive practices.Explores how anxiety and stress caused by the Trump presidency impacted parents’ school engagement.Describes three ways any school community can develop family-school partnerships for collective educational justice.

The Age of Revolution (1776-1848) destroyed the main slave regimes of the Caribbean but a 'Second Slavery' surged in the US South, Cuba and Brazil, powered by demand for plantation produce and a system of financial credit that leveraged the value of the slaves. By 1860, more than 6 million captives of African descent toiled to produce the cotton, sugar and coffee craved by global consumers. This 'Second Slavery' mimicked capitalist disciplines, intensified slavery's racial character and launched half a century of headlong economic growth. On the eve of the American Civil War, the Slave Power seemed invincible. The slaveholding elite entrenched their 'peculiar institution' in the fabric of the Union only to risk everything on secession. Nobody solicited the slaves' wishes until it became clear that, wherever they could, they were deserting the plantations and joining the Union forces. Abolition radicals destroyed the Second Slavery and victory for the North also spelled defeat for slavery in Cuba and Brazil. But in each of these societies racial oppression was to be reconfigured by 'Black Codes', Jim Crow and toxic doctrines of racial destiny. Slavery leaves an indelible mark on many Atlantic nations. The Reckoning charts the historic impact of slavery and anti-slavery, of black and white activists, of fugitive slaves, feminists, writers, clerics and soldiers. Notwithstanding much unfinished business, the anti-slavery struggle retains its capacity to illuminate and inspire.

In 1997, complacency about the racial neutrality of a predominantly white judiciary was shattered as the Supreme Court of Canada considered a complaint of judicial racial bias for the first time. The judge in question was Corrine Sparks, the country’s first Black female judge. Reckoning with Racism considers the RDS case. A white Halifax police officer had arrested a Black teenager, placed him in a choke hold, and charged him with assaulting an officer and obstructing arrest. In acquitting the teen, Judge Sparks remarked that police sometimes overreacted when dealing with non-white youth. The acquittal held, but most of the white appeal judges critiqued her comments, based on the tradition that the legal system was non-racist unless proven otherwise. That became a matter of wide debate. This book assesses the case of alleged anti-white judicial bias, the surrounding excitement, the dramatic effects on those involved, and the significance for the Canadian legal system.

The politics of racism have returned with a vengeance in the wake of widespread outrage over racial violence, yet nothing about the idea of racism is the same because everything has changed in how we see, think, and talk about it.

A 2023 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner At a time when many individuals and institutions are reexamining their histories to better understand their tangled roots of racism and oppression, Reckoning: Kalamazoo College Uncovers Its Racial and Colonial Past tells the story of how American ideas about colonialism and race shaped Kalamazoo College, a progressive liberal arts institution in the Midwest. Beginning with its founding in 1833 during the era of Indian Removal, the book follows the development of the college through the Civil War, the long period of racial entrenchment that followed Reconstruction, minstrel shows performed on campus in the 1950s during the rise of the Civil Rights movement, Black student activism in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination, the quest for multiculturalism in the 1990s, and the recent activism of a changing student body. This close look at the colonial and racial history of one institution reveals academia’s investment in White supremacy and the permutations and contradictions of race and racism in higher education. Though the details are unique to Kalamazoo, other predominantly White colleges and universities would have similar historical trajectories, for in the end our institutional histories reflect the history of the United States. By examining the ways in which a progressive, midwestern college has absorbed, resisted, and perpetuated American systems of colonialism and racism, the book challenges higher education to use this moment to make the deep, structural changes necessary to eliminate disparities in experiences and outcomes among students of color and their White peers. Reckoning is a volume that can be used in a variety of courses that deal with topics such as History of Education, Social Justice in Higher Education, and more. Perfect for courses such as: Pursuing Diversity, Inclusion, Justice, and Equity │ Education and Cultural Studies │ Exploring Whiteness │ Inquiry in Postsecondary Education │ Proseminar in Adult and Higher Education │ Education and Social Struggle in the U.S., WWII – Present │ Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Student Affairs │Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education │ History of American Education │ Diversity in Higher Education

Stages of Reckoning is a crucial conversation about how racialized bodies and power intersect within actor training spaces. This book provokes embodied and intellectual discomfort for the reader to take risks with their ideologies, identities, and practices and to make new pedagogical choices for students with racialized identities. Centering the voices of actor trainers of color to acknowledge their personal experience and professional pedagogy as theory, this volume illuminates actionable ideas for text work, casting, voice, consent practices, and movement while offering decolonial approaches to current Eurocentric methods. These offerings invite the reader to create spaces where students can bring more of themselves, their communities, and their stories into their training and as fodder for performance making that will lead to a more just world. This book is for people in high/secondary schools, higher education, and private training studios who wish to teach and direct actors of color in ways that more fully honor their multiple identities.

This book addresses endemic issues of racism in news media at what is a critical moment in time, as journalists around the world speak out en masse against the prejudice and inequality in the industry. As the events of 2020 – the death of George Floyd, the rise in prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement – have drawn new and focused attention to inequality, white supremacy, and systemic racism, including in the media, this volume chronicles this racial reckoning, revisiting and examining the issues that it has raised. The author analyses media output by racialized and Indigenous journalists, identifying the racial make-up of newsrooms; the dominance of white perspectives in news coverage; interpretations of ethics downplaying systemic racism and bias; ignorance of racist history in editorial decisions and news content; and diversity and inclusion measures. The actions taken by news organizations in response to the reckoning are also detailed and placed in the context of existing race and media scholarship, to offer emerging strategies to address journalism’s longstanding issues with racism in news content and newsrooms. Grounding the interplay between news media and race within this pivotal moment in history, this text will be an important resource for students and scholars of journalism, journalism ethics, sociology, cultural studies, organizational studies, media and communication studies.

"This book contains a variety of practical implementations of teaching and learning in English education across ELA, literacy, and ESL. Such engagement sets out to directly confront persistent iterations of whiteness in English education through advancing antiracist dispositions and practices with the aim of disrupting the reproduction of white supremacy in curriculum and instruction. The authors of the chapters in this book are educators and scholars who describe and analyze various teaching projects located in K-12 and teacher education contexts. Dialogic reactions to these chapters are also offered throughout the book by acclaimed and experienced educators to further extend and complicate thought and action around themes emerging from the work. Ultimately, the intention of this work is to encourage a more pedagogical view of how to engage teacher and student thought, feeling, and action in ways that foster conversation for combating white supremacy in English education across schools and society"--

In Reckoning with Slavery Jennifer L. Morgan draws on the lived experiences of enslaved African women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to reveal the contours of early modern notions of trade, race, and commodification in the Black Atlantic. From capture to transport to sale to childbirth, these women were demographically counted as commodities during the Middle Passage, vulnerable to rape, separated from their kin at slave markets, and subject to laws that enslaved their children upon birth. In this way, they were central to the binding of reproductive labor with kinship, racial hierarchy, and the economics of slavery. Throughout this groundbreaking study, Morgan demonstrates that the development of Western notions of value and race occurred simultaneously. In so doing, she illustrates how racial capitalism denied the enslaved their kinship and affective ties while simultaneously relying on kinship to reproduce and enforce slavery through enslaved female bodies.