Everyone has an opinion on racism. The vast majority of people would vehemently deny that they or those close to them are “racist,” yet many of the most common understandings of racism are highly problematic. “If you mean no harm, then it can’t be racist.” Yes, it can. “There are anti-discrimination laws now, so racism no longer occurs.” Incorrect. “Some of my best friends are Black, so I can’t be racist.” Not true. In this sharp, open-minded, and witty book, sociologist Jennifer Patrice Sims succinctly addresses these problematic perceptions of racism as fallacies. Building on existing academic theories and drawing on her own cross-national research, two decades of teaching, and analyses of contemporary issues, she delves into the most common and insidious fallacies about racism. In revealing them to be rooted in what scholars call an “epistemology of ignorance,” she shows how these perceptions justify and uphold white supremacy (inadvertently or otherwise). Accessibly written and full of concrete examples, this book will be of great value to anyone who wants to understand the common misunderstandings about racism that frustrate contemporary politics, classrooms, workplaces, and dinner tables.

This fascinating study in the sociology of knowledge documents the refutation of scientific foundations for racism in Britain and the United States between the two World Wars, when racial differences were no longer attributed to cultural factors. Professor Barkan considers the social significance of this transformation, particularly its effect on race relations in the modern world. Discussing the work of the leading biologists and anthropologists who wrote between the wars, he argues that the impetus for the shift in ideologies came from the inclusion of outsiders (women, Jews, and leftists) who infused greater egalitarianism into scientific discourse. But even though the emerging view of race was constrained by a scientific language, he shows that modern theorists were as much influenced by social and political events as were their predecessors.

Man's Most Dangerous Myth was first published in 1942, when Nazism flourished, when African Americans sat at the back of the bus, and when race was considered the determinant of people's character and intelligence. It presented a revolutionary theory for its time; breaking the link between genetics and culture, it argued that race is largely a social construction and not constitutive of significant biological differences between people. In the ensuing 55 years, as Ashley Montagu's radical hypothesis became accepted knowledge, succeeding editions of his book traced the changes in our conceptions of race and race relations over the 20th century. Now, over 50 years later, Man's Most Dangerous Myth is back in print, fully revised by the original author. Montagu is internationally renowned for his work on race, as well as for such influential books as The Natural Superiority of Women, Touching, and The Elephant Man. This new edition contains Montagu's most complete explication of his theory and a thorough updating of previous editions. The Sixth Edition takes on the issues of the Bell Curve, IQ testing, ethnic cleansing and other current race relations topics, as well as contemporary restatements of topics previously addressed. A bibliography of almost 3,000 published items on race, compiled over a lifetime of work, is of enormous research value. Also available is an abridged student edition containing the essence of Montagu's argument, its policy implications, and his thoughts on contemporary race issues for use in classrooms. Ahead of its time in 1942, Montagu's arguments still contribute essential and salient perspectives as we face the issue of race in the 1990s. Man's Most Dangerous Myth is the seminal work of one of the 20th century's leading intellectuals, essential reading for all scholars and students of race relations.

Interpreting Music, Engaging Culture: An Introduction to Music Criticism offers a clear, hands-on guide for emerging music critics that brings together aesthetics, critical theory, and practical music criticism in an accessible format. Over the course of the book, readers develop a vocabulary and framework for criticizing music of all kinds and for various media while learning how to connect music to its cultural, social, and political contexts. Excerpts from primary sources throughout provide a wide range of writing examples, while Chapters address the distinct challenges of describing and interpreting music for various media and in diverse formats. Along the way, the book explores questions at the core of music and its criticism, such as what constitutes a musical work and what makes a piece of music “authentic”; it also introduces critical lenses, including feminist and queer criticism, postcolonialism and critical race theory, as well as the analysis of music in consumer culture. Addressing both classical and popular music criticism, Interpreting Music, Engaging Culture is a comprehensive and lively textbook that enables students to uncover, articulate, and analyze what makes music compelling and meaningful.

Innovative new study mapping African American and Francophone black intellectual collaborations over human rights and citizenship from 1919 to 1963.

In The Culture Trap, Derron Wallace argues that the overreliance on culture to explain Black students' achievement and behavior in schools is a trap that undermines the historical factors and institutional processes that shape how Black students experience schooling. This trap is consequential for a host of racial and ethnic minority youth in schools, including Black Caribbean young people in London and New York City. Since the 1920s, Black Caribbeans in New York have been considered a high-achieving Black model minority. Conversely, since the 1950s, Black Caribbeans in London have been regarded as a chronically underachieving minority. In both contexts, however, it is often suggested that Caribbean culture informs their status, whether as a celebrated minority in the US or as a demoted minority in Britain. Drawing on rich ethnographic observations, as well as interview and archival data from two of the largest public schools in London and New York City, Wallace interrogates the fault lines of these claims, and highlights the influence of colonialism, class, and context in shaping Black Caribbeans' educational experiences. As racial and ethnic achievement gaps and discussions about what to do about them persist in the US and Britain, Wallace shows how culture is at times used as an alibi for racism in schools, and points out what educators, parents, and students can do to change it.

"Graves' answers could revise the ways in which humans interact with one another."--"Choice." "A fine start for thinking about race at the dawn of the millennium."--"American Scientist."

Healing the Racial Divide retrieves the insights of Dr. Arthur Falls (1901-2000) for composing a renewed theology of Catholic racial justice. Falls was a black Catholic medical doctor who dedicated his life to healing rifts created by white supremacy and racism. He integrated theology, the social sciences, and personal experience to compose a salve that was capable of not only integrating neighborhoods but also eradicating the segregation that existed in Chicago hospitals. Falls was able to reframe the basic truths of the Christian faith in a way that unleashed their prophetic power. He referred to those Catholics who promoted segregation in Chicago as believers in the "mythical body of Christ," as opposed to the mystical body of Christ. The "mythical body of Christ" is a heretical doctrine that excludes African Americans and promotes the delusion that white people are the normative measure of the Catholic faith.

‘No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media’ examines the social phenomenon of construction and dissemination of colonial-like racist discourses fostered against upwardly-mobile black women through disparagement humour on social media platforms, adopting a fresh and innovative perspective. In this book, Luiz Valério P. Trindade explores the idea that disparagement humour might not be as exempt of social impact as the jokers might believe, and that, in fact, this kind of humour reveals the hidden facet of deep-seated colonial ideologies still present in Brazilian society despite being hailed as a unique model of a post-racial society. The author argues that these ideologies establish and naturalise superior social positions and symbolic privileges to whites while undermining and delegitimising black women’s upward social mobility. Social media platforms enable the proponents of these beliefs not only to engage in the practice of online hate speech but also to attract a considerable number of like-minded people, creating a long-lasting echo chamber effect in the cyberspace. This way, they manage to amplify the reach and reverberation of their racist discourses in the online environment in ways not commonly seen in Brazilian offline social contexts. This monograph is of great interest and relevance to students, scholars, and researchers across a variety of disciplines, most notably Critical Race Studies, Media Communication Studies and Critical Humour Studies, and also academics in other areas such as Critical Discourse Analysis, Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies and Latin American Studies.