Curtis Ivery, Ed. D., Chancellor of the Wayne County Community College District in Detroit. He was formerly Commissioner of Human Services in Arkansas under Governor William Clinton. He has been engaged in civil rights projects for more than three decades and has published extensively on civil rights issues.Joshua Bassett, coeditor, is Director of the Institute for Social Progress, a civil rights and educational institute located at Wayne County Community College District. He was executive director of the "Educational Summit: Detroit and the Crisis in Urban America Conference" (broadcast nationally on C-Span network) as well as the national "Rebuilding Lives" criminal justice conference, held in Detroit in 2004. His current academic work concerns the application of semiotic theory to studies of color-blind ideology.

• AcknowledgmentsForeword by Cornel WestPrefaceChapter 1: Introduction and Theoretical OverviewChapter 2: Color-blind Ideology and the Urban Crisis“Color-blindness, Racism, and Multiracial Democracy” Michael Omi"Difference,’ Emiseration, and America's Urban Crisis” Houston Baker“Sure, We're All Just One Big Happy Family” Benjamin Demott“Immigration, Education, and the Media” Maria Hinojosa“Incarcerated and Disappeared in the Land of the Free” Trinh Minh-HaChapter 3: Mass Incarceration and the Urban Crisis“Mass Incarceration, Civil Death, and the New Racial Domain” Manning Marable“Mass Incarceration, Race, and Criminal Justice Policy” Marc Mauer“Racial Profiling and Imprisonment of the Mentally Ill” Bob Herbert“The Case of Jonathan Magbie” Colbert I. KingChapter 4: Segregation and the Urban Crisis“Race and Residential Segregation in Detroit” john powell and John Telford“Health Care as a Civil Rights Issue” Alvin F. Poussaint“A Call for Multicultural Dialogues” James J. Zogby“American Education: Still Separate, Still Unequal” Arthur LevineChapter 5: Education and the Urban Crisis“Toward a Paradigm Shift in Our Concept of Education” Grace Lee Boggs“Writing and Multiracial Education” Nell Irvin Painter“Police In Schools: Can a Law Enforcement Orientation Be Reconciled With an Educational Mission?” Johanna Wald and Lisa Thurau“Pursuing the Promise of Brown in the 21st Century” Erica FrankenbergChapter 6: Multiracial Democracy and the Urban Crisis“In Our Lifetime”Henry Louis Gates, Jr.“Making Every Vote Count”Lani Guinier“Segregation by Race, Segregation from Opportunity, and the Subversion of Multiracial Democracy in Detroit”Andrew Grant-Thomas“How We Are White” Gary HowardChapter 7: Conclusion

America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-blind Politics explains the continuity and depth of racial injustice in the US, focusing on the failures of colorblind approaches to race. After the containment of the civil rights movement, the claim of colorblindness was adopted (from Justice Harlan's dissent in Plessy), as a type of 'anti-racism lite.' But is it also 'racism lite?' In its dismissal of race, color-blind politics fails to address the system of crime and punishment, the ongoing segregation and urban inequality, and the numerous other forms of racial despotism that still operate in the United States today. Most valuable here is the authors' argument for multiracial democracy as the way forward. Highly recommended for course adoption!