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When African American servicemen went to fight in the Vietnam War, discrimination and prejudice followed them. Even in a faraway country, their military experiences were shaped by the racial environment of the home front. War is often viewed as a crucible that can transform society, but American race relations proved remarkably durable.  

In Race in the Crucible of War, Gerald F. Goodwin examines how Black servicemen experienced and interpreted racial issues during their time in Vietnam. Drawing on more than fifty new oral interviews and significant archival research, as well as newspapers, periodicals, memoirs, and documentaries, Goodwin reveals that for many African Americans the front line and the home front were two sides of the same coin. Serving during the same period as the civil rights movement and the race riots in Chicago, Detroit, and dozens of other American cities, these men increasingly connected the racism that they encountered in the barracks and on the battlefields with the tensions and violence that were simmering back home.

The contemporary rethinking and relearning of history and racism has sparked creative approaches for teaching the histories and representations of marginalized communities. Cristina Stanciu and Gary Totten edit a collection that illuminates these ideas for a variety of fields, areas of education, and institutional contexts.

The authors draw on their own racial and ethnic backgrounds to examine race and racism in the context of addressing necessary and often difficult classroom conversations about race, histories of exclusion, and racism. Case studies, reflections, and personal experiences provide guidance for addressing race and racism in the classroom. In-depth analysis looks at attacks on teaching Critical Race Theory and other practices for studying marginalized histories and voices. Throughout, the contributors shine a light on how a critical framework focused on race advances an understanding of contemporary and historical US multiethnic literatures for students around the world and in all fields of study.

Contributors: Kristen Brown, Nancy Carranza, Luis Cortes, Marilyn Edelstein, Naomi Edwards, Joanne Lipson Freed, Yadira Gamez, Lauren J. Gantz, Jennifer Ho, Shermaine M. Jones, Norell Martinez, Sarah Minslow, Crystal R. Pérez, Kevin Pyon, Emily Ruth Rutter, Ariel Santos, and C. Anneke Snyder

Winner, Ray & Pat Browne Award for Best Reference/Primary Source Work in Popular and American Culture, Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, 2016

Known for their violence and prolific profanity, including free use of the n-word, the films of Quentin Tarantino, like the director himself, chronically blurt out in polite company what is extremely problematic even when deliberated in private. Consequently, there is an uncomfortable and often awkward frankness associated with virtually all of Tarantino’s films, particularly when it comes to race and blackness. Yet beyond the debate over whether Tarantino is or is not racist is the fact that his films effectively articulate racial anxieties circulating in American society as they engage longstanding racial discourses and hint at emerging trends. This radical racial politics—always present in Tarantino’s films but kept very much on the quiet—is the subject of Race on the QT.

Adilifu Nama concisely deconstructs and reassembles the racial dynamics woven into Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained, as they relate to historical and current racial issues in America. Nama’s eclectic fusion of cultural criticism and film analysis looks beyond the director’s personal racial attitudes and focuses on what Tarantino’s filmic body of work has said and is saying about race in America symbolically, metaphorically, literally, impolitely, cynically, sarcastically, crudely, controversially, and brilliantly.

Studying the early modern split between science and literature and the aftermath of their division

The conception of computers as thinking machines and literature as a social field stems from the early modern phenomenon of competing over the infinite as an object not just of contemplation but of appropriation in a race toward virtual control. The rediscovery of this origin undoes a collective forgetting of what technology and texts have in common, what they don’t, and what they can and ought to be in the future. David L. Sedley offers a new history of literature and science’s disciplinary divide—its origin and significance—tracing a series of points along the emerging frontier between these two fields. At each point there are two objects in play and two authors who push the objects in opposite directions: on the one hand, mechanical arts and the essay, probability theory and the novel, and geometry and epic; on the other, Montaigne and Bacon, Pascal and Lafayette, and Hobbes and Milton. Each of these authors, Sedley shows, tried to render an object either algorithmic or infinite to oppose the other’s efforts. Ultimately, Race to Infinity: Early Modern Distinctions Between Literature and Science illuminates the fortunes of the literary in the digital revolution and beyond.

 Exploring the intertwined histories of race, labor, and community in the American South.

Under the leadership of Gary M. Fink and Merl E. Reed, Georgia State University hosts the Southern Labor Studies Conferences approximately every two years. The conferences have yielded two previous volumes, published in 1977 and 1981, and this volume, which contains selected papers from the seventh conference held in 1991.

As evidence by the quality of these essays, the field of southern labor history has come into its own. Research interest is peaking: the practitioners are younger scholars, and much of their work emphasizes the new social and political history. While the topics covered in this volume usually reflect that methodology, their chronology ranges from the antebellum period to the 1970s, suggesting the variety of sources and changing research approaches that can be used in rendering new meaning to the past. Although the subject of gender was generally a minor theme in these sessions, work now being done leaves no doubt that at some future conference gender will attract a commanding amount of attention.

In introducing and describing their respective areas, the associate editors, Robert H. Zieger (textile workers), Joe W. Trotter (African Americans), and Clifford Kuhn (labor politics), have provided a rich historiographical background.

The essays in this volume will enlighten the reader on many important aspects of the history of southern labor, and they will also raise new questions to be explained by other scholars and future conferences.

While Brazil is famous for its history of racial diversity and was once revered as a “racial democracy,” its political arena is a site of separation. Elected officials in the country, which has the largest African descendant population of any country outside of Africa, are overwhelmingly white. Why are Afro-Brazilians not elected in proportion to their population size? And how does their underrepresentation affect the policymaking process?

In Race, Elections, and Power in Modern Brazil, Andrew Janusz argues that race shapes who runs for public office, who is elected, and who they represent. Drawing on surveys, interviews, and administrative election datasets, he shows that white politicians have several electoral advantages over their Afro-Brazilian competitors. Due to social stereotypes and racism, white Brazilians are more likely than Afro-Brazilians to be recruited by party elites, raise campaign funds, and be favored by voters. Using original data on legislator behavior, Janusz also finds that Brazil’s predominately white lawmakers are largely unresponsive to the needs of marginalized Afro-Brazilians and less likely than their Afro-Brazilian counterparts to advance legislation that would meaningfully enhance their quality of life. Providing compelling empirical evidence that Brazil is a racialized democracy, this book offers an accessible and eye-opening look at the central role race plays in Brazilian politics.

Categorizing race and ethnicity for twenty-first-century statistics and economics.

The increasing racial and ethnic diversity of the US population raises the question of whether the race and ethnicity categories and definitions used by federal statistical agencies to create demographic statistics on which government officials, business decision-makers, and private citizens rely fully reflect the changing population. Official definitions of existing race and ethnic groups do not always command wide agreement, and over time, some definitions that were once widely accepted may become less so based on political, legal, and social factors. Comparable measures of race and ethnicity over time are needed to accurately track historical changes in economic and social outcomes, as well as racial and ethnic segregation.

This volume explores the production of economic statistics that accurately depict the complex racial and ethnic diversity of the US population in the twenty-first century. The chapters examine the consequences for economic analyses of different measurement choices concerning race and ethnicity, assess the likely implications of the 2024 changes in federal race and ethnicity measurement standards, introduce new data sets with richer demographic information, and compare measures of race and ethnicity in administrative versus survey data. They also apply existing data in creative ways to develop alternative characterizations of the changing US workforce and to illuminate important policy questions related to criminal justice, immigration, labor market discrimination, the social safety net, health care, and child welfare.

Black and white Americans have occupied separate spaces since the days of "the big house" and "the quarters." But the segregation and racialization of American society was not a natural phenomenon that "just happened." The decisions, enacted into laws, that kept the races apart and restricted blacks to less desirable places sprang from legal reasoning which argued that segregated spaces were right, reasonable, and preferable to other arrangements.

In this book, David Delaney explores the historical intersections of race, place, and the law. Drawing on court cases spanning more than a century, he examines the moves and countermoves of attorneys and judges who participated in the geopolitics of slavery and emancipation; in the development of Jim Crow segregation, which effectively created apartheid laws in many cities; and in debates over the "doctrine of changed conditions," which challenged the legality of restrictive covenants and private contracts designed to exclude people of color from white neighborhoods. This historical investigation yields new insights into the patterns of segregation that persist in American society today.

An eye-opening examination of the ties between American gun culture and white male supremacy from the American Revolution to today.

One-third of American adults—approximately 86 million people—own firearms. This is not just for protection or hunting. Although many associate gun-centric ideology with individualist and libertarian traditions in American political culture, Race, Rights, and Rifles shows that it rests on an equally old but different foundation. Instead, Alexandra Filindra shows that American gun culture can be traced back to the American Revolution when republican notions of civic duty were fused with a belief in white male supremacy and a commitment to maintaining racial and gender hierarchies.

Drawing on wide-ranging historical and contemporary evidence, Race, Rights, and Rifles traces how this ideology emerged during the Revolution and became embedded in America’s institutions, from state militias to the National Rifle Association (NRA). Utilizing original survey data, Filindra reveals how many White Americans —including those outside of the NRA’s direct orbit—embrace these beliefs, and as a result, they are more likely than other Americans to value gun rights over voting rights, embrace antidemocratic norms, and justify political violence.

Did Elvis Presley's brand of rock 'n' roll help revise racial attitudes in postwar America? Michael T. Bertrand delves into this question and many others to investigate popular music's revolutionary influence on black-white relations in the South. 

Youthful fans of rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, and other black-inspired music often broke from their segregationist elders and ignored the color line. Not coincidentally, these same young white people--the southern branch of a national and commercialized youth culture--led a general relaxation of racist attitudes. Bertrand argues that African American music facilitated a new recognition of black people as fellow human beings. African American audiences welcomed Elvis with enthusiasm while racially mixed audiences flocked to music venues at a time when adults expected separate performances for black and white audiences. Bertrand also describes the critical role of radio and recordings in making African American culture available to white fans on an unprecedented scale. Over time, southern working-class youth used the new music to define and express new values and build their own identities.

A fascinating cultural history, Races of Mankind examines how we continually re-negotiate the veracity of race through collaborative processes involved in the production, display, and circulation of visual representations.