In Race Becomes Tomorrow Gerald M. Sider weaves together stories from his civil rights activism, his youth, and his experiences as an anthropologist to investigate the dynamic ways race has been constructed and lived in America since the 1960s. Tacking between past and present, Sider describes how political power, economic control, and racism inject chaos into the lives of ordinary people, especially African Americans, with surprising consequences. In addition to recounting his years working on voter registration in rural North Carolina, Sider makes connections between numerous issues, from sharecropping and deindustrialization to the recessions of the 1970s and 2008, the rise of migrant farm labor, and contemporary living-wage campaigns. Sider's stories—whether about cockroach races in immigrant homes, degrading labor conditions, or the claims and failures of police violence—provide numerous entry points into gaining a deeper understanding of how race and power both are and cannot be lived. They demonstrate that race is produced and exists in unpredictability, and that the transition from yesterday to tomorrow is anything but certain.
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Past History
- Part I: Stories
- 1. Did the Conk Rag Lose?
- 2. The Waters of Death and Life
- 3. Cockroach Racing
- Part II: Culturing Words
- 4. Naming Troubles
- 5. State Making
- 6. F&N: Intimacy, Distance, Anger
- Part III: Beyond
- 7. Living in the Beyond
- 8. “Out Here It’s Dog Eat Dog and Vice Versa”
- Part IV: Living Contradictions
- 9. Civil Society and Civil Rights on One Leg
- 10. “We Dies in Harness ...”: The Tomorrows of Vulnerable People
- Appendix: Demographic Post–Civil Rights History of African American Towns in Robeson County
- References
- Index
- Photographs
Text
Audio
Adobe DRM
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