Margaret Kimberley

Black politics are key to recognizing the most important social dynamics of the United States. Over the past forty years, no commentator has been as deeply insightful about the paradoxes and personalities of Black American public life as the journalist and radio host Glen Ford. In this stunning overview, Ford draws from his work for Black Agenda Report, one of the most incisive and perceptive publications of the progressive left, to examine competing struggles for class power and identity in the Black movement. In a survey stretching from the violent gentrification of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, through the engineered bankruptcy of Detroit, to the “more effective evil” of the Obama presidency, Ford casts a caustic eye on the empty posturing and corruption of the Democratic Party. This, he insists, depends on a Black constituency for electoral success, while using a co-opted “Black misleadership class” to sell out working people’s interests. Profiling along the way storied Black leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Brown (for whom Ford once worked), The Black Agenda looks, too, beyond American shores, at US intervention in Libya, the Congo and the Middle East, showing how these are imbricated with racism at home. Ford concludes with a discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement, setting out both its pitfalls and potentialities.

Prejudential is a concise, authoritative exploration of America's relationship with race and black Americans through the lens of the presidents who are elected to represent and govern all of its people. Throughout the history of the United States, numerous presidents have been remembered as slaveholders, bigots and inciters of racial violence, but were others generally regarded as more sympathetic to the plight and interests of black Americans--such as Lincoln, FDR and Clinton--really much better? And what of all the presidents whose interactions with and impacts on the lives of black America are hardly considered at all? Over the course of 45 chapters--one for each president--Kimberley examines the condition of black America through the attitudes and actions of the highest elected official in the country. This is not meant to be a definitive examination of the topic but rather an informative and engaging guide that illustrates the merits and especially the shortcomings of even those presidents considered more progressive than their contemporaries on race issues. By casting sunlight on an aspect of American history that is largely overlooked, Prejudential aims to increase awareness in a manner that will facilitate discussion and understanding.