Race and the Politics of the Exception

Utz McKnight is an Associate Professor in Political Science and Chair of the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama. His publications include The Everyday Practice of Race in America and Political Liberalism and the Politics of Race.

• Introduction. Part I: Defining Exceptions to Equality 1. The Racist and the Elite. 2. The New Normal. Part II: Defining Racial Sovereignty 3. The Experience of Race. 4. Race and Community. 5. History and Politics Part III: Black Politics 6. Slavery and Its Aftermath. 7. Jim Crow. 8. Integration. Conclusion

"If the election of Barack Obama signaled that Americans had embraced the idea of racial equality, it disguised the continuing hold of white sovereignty and subjection of black communities. Utz McKnight demonstrates the danger of accepting the common sense of the ‘post-racial era’ and offers a compelling alternative. Creatively interweaving continental political thought, critical theories of race, and African American fiction, Race and the Politics of the Exception paints a portrait of racial power, from slavery to the present, that demands our attention."—Lawrie Balfour, University of Virginia "McKnight is one of the most interesting and important writers on the question of race in democratic political theory. In this new book he turns to the actual status of race in the American political system. Importantly, he finds central resources in European thought, which he uses to show that even with the election of an African-American president, race cannot be understood as a matter increasingly of the past. For McKnight. the racial subject remains as a central concern in democratic theory. In A Preface to Democratic Theory, Robert Dahl argued that the path to overcoming racism lay in the attainment of formal juridical equality – McKnight shows us why that is not the case. This book is a new and important reconceptualization of the question of race in America."—Tracy B. Strong, UC San Diego