Overview

For many progressives, racial identities are the engine of American history, and by extension, contemporary politics. They, in short, want to separate race from class. While policymakers and pundits find an almost metaphysical racism, or the survival of an ancient and primordial tribalism at the heart of American life, these inequities are better understood when traced to more comprehensible forces: to the contradictions in access to New Deal era welfare programs, to the blinders imposed by the Cold War, to Ronald Reagan’s neoliberal assault on the half-century long Keynesian consensus. As Touré Reed argues in this rigorously constructed book, the road to a more just society for African Americans and everyone else, the fate of poor and working-class African Americans is inextricably linked to that of other poor and working-class Americans.

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9781786634382

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Reviews

A must-read for scholars and activists. Reed argues that Afro-Americans' quest for freedom has been most successful when a common-good, rather than identity-group, strategy has determined tactics and alliances. He pin-points deindustrialization and the decline of labor unions as the chief reasons for the current predicament of Afro-American working people, while warning against the latest neoliberal market prescription: reparations. --Barbara J. Fields, author (with Karen E. Fields) of Racecraft Toure Reed is the most brilliant historian of the black freedom movement of his generation. This book is the best grasp of our recent past and guide for a progressive future we have! --Cornel West, author of Race Matters A strong tonic against the historical distortions and defeatism that have accompanied the revival of liberal antiracism. Reed reminds us that black civil rights leaders during the Depression and Second World War saw the fight against segregation as inextricable from the broader struggle for worker power. There is simply no better tour guide out of the dead ends of race reductionism. --Cedric Johnson, author of Revolutionaries to Race Leaders At a moment when liberals and leftists are stuck in a never-ending argument over the primacy of race or class, Toward Freedom offers a way forward. A triumph of historical vision and craft. --Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind A motivating account of the ubiquitous race reductionism among neoliberals today that continues to derail serious efforts to rebuild America's public sector, and along with it, the lives and prospects of working-class people. --Heather Gautney, Senior Policy Advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders, Fordham University Reed's brilliantly argued and accessible book does not just marshal an impressive array of historical evidence in building the brief against race reductionism. It offers a most timely analytical intervention that can give us much needed perspective on the Sanders primary debacle of 2020. --Roger Lancaster, New Labor Forum

A must-read for scholars and activists. Reed argues that Afro-Americans' quest for freedom has been most successful when a common-good, rather than identity-group, strategy has determined tactics and alliances. He pin-points deindustrialization and the decline of labor unions as the chief reasons for the current predicament of Afro-American working people, while warning against the latest neoliberal market prescription: reparations. --Barbara J. Fields, author (with Karen E. Fields) of Racecraft Toure Reed is the most brilliant historian of the black freedom movement of his generation. This book is the best grasp of our recent past and guide for a progressive future we have! --Cornel West, author of Race Matters A strong tonic against the historical distortions and defeatism that have accompanied the revival of liberal antiracism. Reed reminds us that black civil rights leaders during the Depression and Second World War saw the fight against segregation as inextricable from the broader struggle for worker power. There is simply no better tour guide out of the dead ends of race reductionism. --Cedric Johnson, author of Revolutionaries to Race Leaders At a moment when liberals and leftists are stuck in a never-ending argument over the primacy of race or class, Toward Freedom offers a way forward. A triumph of historical vision and craft. --Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind A motivating account of the ubiquitous race reductionism among neoliberals today that continues to derail serious efforts to rebuild America's public sector, and along with it, the lives and prospects of working-class people. --Heather Gautney, Senior Policy Advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders, Fordham University

Praise for Not Alms but Opportunity A first-rate treatment of its subject.--Journal of American History Reed succeeds in making sense of the ideological and class perspectives that shaped the initiatives of the Urban League. . . . He also makes a compelling argument for a more holistic approach to any project designed to 'uplift the race.'--Journal of American Ethnic History [An] excellent study of the National Urban League. . . . What distinguishes Reed's study from previous scholarship is not his critique of the economic and cultural biases of racial uplift but, rather, his detailed analysis of their effects.--U.S. Intellectual-History Not Alms but Opportunity is at once a solid institutional history of the early decades of the National Urban League as well as a nuanced exploration of the very complicated politics of racial uplift. It is refreshing to see the ways that Reed gives the organization flesh and blood. In his hands the Urban League is seen as a totally human invention--altruistic in its determination to make a better way for black Americans while simultaneously riven by class distinctions and confining notions of 'proper behavior.'--Jonathan Holloway, author of Confronting the Veil: Abram Harris, E. Franklin Frazier, and Ralph Bunche, 1919-1941 * journal of american history * Reed's brilliantly argued and accessible book does not just marshal an impressive array of historical evidence in building the brief against race reductionism. It offers a most timely analytical intervention that can give us much needed perspective on the Sanders primary debacle of 2020. -- Roger Lancaster * New Labor Forum * A forceful critique of race reductionism -- Preston H. Smith II * Catalyst * An intricate account of the conservative drift in liberal thinking and policy from the Great Depression to the current moment. Throughout, Reed examines how antiracist demands were continuously isolated from broader demands for economic reforms that would coalesce the interests of working-class Americans to endanger capital. -- J.J. Charlesworth * ArtReview * Reed's study provides a compelling explanation for why successive governments have failed to address a durable racial inequality in the late 20th and 21st century. -- Preston H. Smith II * Journal of Urban Affairs *

Author Information

Touré F. Reed teaches twentieth-century US and Afro-American history at Illinois State University, and is the author of Not Alms But Opportunity: The Urban League and the Politics of Racial Uplift, 1910-1950 (UNC Press, 2008). He is a fourth generation African American educator and a third generation professor.

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