On Race

Reviews / Votes

Yancy's book is a great example of how scholarly dialogue can contribute to high-quality public debates, especially about essentially contested concepts and topics such as race and racism... On Race is a valuable book in times of widespread polarisation between voices against racism on one side and loud, aggressive, often irrational and overtly racist responses on the other. In many ways, the book resembles a quiet space in which people interested in listening and learning about race can do so away from the social media frenzy. * Leonardo Custodio, LSE US Centre * The remarkable breadth of this collection renders it an excellent introduction for any interested and "educated" reader who is relatively new to the scholarly discussion of racism in the US. Furthermore, Yancy's tone as an interviewer is inviting and collaborative rather than confrontational. Rather than critically engaging his interviewees, even those with whom he might disagree, he has invited each of them--and by extension the reader--not to wallow in white guilt or Black self-pity, but to draw upon their expertise and experience in the service of Yancy's ambitious project of thinking through possible solutions to American racism. * Amir Jaima, Hypatia * George Yancy has established himself as one of our most engaging philosophers and dynamic interlocutors. So what happens when he sits down with 34 of the most important intellectuals of our era and speaks about the unspeakable - Race? The result is a brilliant cacophony of ideas, critique, exegesis, reflection, memory, pain, anguish, and revelation. Race and racism live despite all of the postracial eulogies, and it continues to remain central to philosophy that matters - philosophy that remains grounded in real life in order to change it. * Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams * George Yancy has assembled a wonderful and timely collection of interviews with contemporary thinkers and philosophers. Given the "urgency of our now" these interviews offer much needed food for thought - a critical vocabulary for considering the constitutive role of racism in the U.S. and the modern world. It is a welcome and necessary contribution to thinking beyond our current impasse. * Saidiya Hartman, Columbia University * Yancy is a brilliant scholar and public intellectual and he has outdone himself with the publication of On Race. The conversations in On Race are fierce, disturbing, brave, illuminating, and breath taking in the scope and range of issues covered. The urgency and brilliance of the dialogue is matched by the lyrical and passionate nature of the conversations that unfold. On Race may be one of the best books we have on what it means to ask critical questions and engage in the type of bristling, informed dialogues that confront the Orwellian nightmare that is now America. Yancy's conversations confront head on the new white terror, emotional brutality, and nativism that has descended upon the U.S. If you are concerned about the merging of the ethical imagination and the struggle for racial justice this is the book for you." Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University How should a liberal society respond to the Ku Klux Klan? What if Batman were a black man? How can a white professor teach about race effectively? Why is there a lack of trust between black communities and local police? Does racism have the same roots as what leads factory farm workers to use live chickens as footballs? Have Muslims of Arab descent replaced black people as the pariah of American society? George Yancy has put together 34 penetrating, illuminating, and in some cases heart-rending interviews with today's leading thinkers about race in a timely book about racism in America that answers these questions and more. * Ruth Chang, Rutgers University *