1st Edition

Black Studies, Cultural Politics, and the Evasion of Inequality The Farce this Time

By Adolph Reed, Jr., Kenneth W. Warren Copyright 2026
274 Pages
by Routledge

274 Pages
by Routledge

274 Pages
by Routledge

These historically grounded essays by Adolph Reed, Jr. and Kenneth W. Warren incorporate essential historical, contemporary, and literary perspectives on Black cultural criticism to explore the full portrait of racial injustice and inequality in America. Taking up such topics as the evolving politics of New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina and novels by Toni Morrison and Colson... Read more

Introduction   

1. Race Reductionism as Class Mythology: From the Solid South to Neoliberal Antiracism   

2. Black Politics in New Orleans, Pre- and Post-Katrina: A Case in the Mutual Constitution of Antiracism and Neoliberalism  

3.  William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and the Rehabilitation of Race Relations 

 4. From Frederick Douglass to Colson Whitehead: Slavery and the Politics of African American Literature  

Coda: You Can’t Get There from Here

Biography

Adolph Reed, Jr. is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts. A veteran activist and prolific analyst of the politics of race and class, his books include Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era, Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene, and The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives.

Kenneth W. Warren is Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. His books include What Was African American Literature?, So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism, and Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literature.