The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse
by Richard Thompson Ford

Hosted by Matthew Crenson, A&S '63, Professor Emeritus of Political Science

"The Race Card is a lively, provocative, well-written, and occasionally even witty account of American race relations in the post-civil rights era. It is an age of confusion when the very meaning of racism is in flux. Ford aims to clarify its meaning and to propose new approaches to the new racism."

— Matthew Crenson,
Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Faculty Host

 

How to Participate

Listen to the audio introduction with the faculty host (34:58)
Read the transcription of the recording
Join the online discussion through JHU inCircle.

About this Month's Selection

President Obama is the most visible member of a rising generation of African Americans for whom the civil rights movement is history, not lived experience. In The Race Card, Richard Thompson Ford surveys the challenges that this generation faces in a society where racism is no longer respectable, but discrimination and segregation persist. The civil rights movement, he suggests, no longer provides a model for confronting bigots, because the bigots who laid the foundations for much of today's racial inequality are long gone. What we face today is "racism without racists." In the meantime, the civil rights model has been appropriated by a variety of groups whose members feel that they are the victims of discrimination. Thompson calls this "racism by analogy." Feminists, gays, the elderly, people who are obese or disabled, even advocates of animal rights have occasionally claimed that they are fighting something like racism. Ford shows why the analogy is often inapt.