Ghosts of Jim Crow : ending racism in post-racial America / F. Michael Higginbotham.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Creating the paradigm: racial hierarchy -- Constructing racial categories from the nation's founding to the Civil War -- Maintaining white dominance during Reconstruction -- Preventing black excellence between Plessy and Brown -- Sustaining the paradigm: white isolation and black separation and subordination -- Maintaining racial segregation in schools and neighborhoods from Brown to the 21st century -- Victimizing blacks in the 21st century -- Ending the paradigm: building a post-racial America -- Black empowerment and self-help -- Integration and equality.

When America inaugurated its first African American president, in 2009, many wondered if the country had finally become a "post-racial" society. Was this the dawning of a new era, in which America, a nation nearly severed in half by slavery, and whose racial fault lines are arguably among its most enduring traits, would at last move beyond race with the election of Barack Hussein Obama? In Ghosts of Jim Crow, F. Michael Higginbotham convincingly argues that America remains far away from that imagined utopia. Indeed, the shadows of Jim Crow era laws and attitudes continue to perpetuate insidious, systemic prejudice and racism in the 21st century. Higginbotham's extensive research demonstrates how laws and actions have been used to maintain a racial paradigm of hierarchy and separation-both historically, in the era of lynch mobs and segregation, and today-legally, economically, educationally and socially. Using history as a roadmap, Higginbotham arrives at a provocative solution for ridding the nation of Jim Crow's ghost, suggesting that legal and political reform can successfully create a post-racial America, but only if it inspires whites and blacks to significantly alter behaviors and attitudes of race-based superiority and victimization. He argues that America will never achieve its full potential unless it truly enters a post-racial era, and believes that time is of the essence as competition increases globally. Instructor's Guide

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