Books

Race Appeal

How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns

Charlton D. McIlwain and Stephen M. Caliendo

In our evolving American political culture, whites and blacks continue to respond very differently to race-based messages and the candidates who use them. Race Appeal examines the use and influence such appeals have on voters in elections for federal office where one candidate is the member of a minority group.

Charlton McIlwain and Stephen Caliendo use various methods of analysis for examining candidates “playing the race card” in political advertisements. They offer a compelling analysis of the construction of verbal and visual racial appeals, and how the news media covers campaigns involving candidates of color.

Combining rigorous analyses with in-depth case studies—including an examination of race-based appeals in the historic 2008 presidential election—Race Appeal is a groundbreaking work that represents the most extensive and thorough treatment of race-based appeals in American political campaigns to date.

New: Read the introduction (.pdf) for free.

The Routledge Companion to Race and Ethnicity

Edited by Stephen M. Caliendo and Charlton D. McIlwain

“Not only does it contribute to our understanding of race and globalization, it makes a powerful statement about race and ethnicity and taken altogether it leaves no stone unturned.” — Anthony Lemelle, City University of New York (USA)

“This is a very wide-ranging, scholarly and accessible collection that will be of interest to a variety of academics, students, and other interested parties concerned with the intellectual and public policy implications of race and ethnicity globally.” – Nasar Meer, University of Northumbria (UK)

The Routledge Companion to Race and Ethnicity is a comprehensive guide to the increasingly relevant, broad and ever changing terrain of studies surrounding race and ethnicity. Comprising a series of essays and a critical dictionary of key names and terms written by respected scholars from a range of academic disciplines, this book provides a thought provoking introduction to the field, and covers: the history and relationship between “race” and ethnicity; the impact of colonialism and post colonialism; emerging concepts of “whiteness”; changing political and social implications of race; race and ethnicity as components of identity; the interrelatedness and intersectionality of race and ethnicity with gender and sexual orientation; and globalization, media, popular culture and their links with race and ethnicity.

Fully cross referenced throughout, with suggestions for further reading and international examples, this book is indispensable reading for all those studying issues of race and ethnicity across the humanities and social and political sciences.

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Inequality in America

Race, poverty and fulfilling democracy’s promise

Stephen M. Caliendo

Inequality in America explores racial and economic inequality in America by virtue of one of the most prominent elements of contemporary democratic theory: representation. Readers to consider their own place in American democracy with respect to these issues by centering discussion on two axes of disadvantage: systemic and individual. From the systemic angle, Caliendo explains how American capitalism and institutionalized racism have simultaneously enabled some persons from oppressed groups to find success in the middle‐ and upper classes while allowing a cycle of poverty (and privilege) to perpetuate such that it is difficult for a person who is born poor to escape poverty. From the individual angle, Caliendo addresses the psychological underpinnings of racism and classism so that readers come to understand how subconscious processes complicate the genuine attempts for people of color and the poor to be truly “seen” as equal to Whites and/or those in the middle‐ and upper classes. In both respects, discussion is grounded in the concept of representation as a democratic ideal. That is, there is explicit discussion of the types and styles of American representation in the context of economic and racial inequality and as manifested through public policy at various levels of government. Further (and perhaps most uniquely), Caliendo argues that a failure to use precise language to differentiate between systemic level oppression and individual‐level prejudice has resulted in slowed or stalled progress toward economic and racial justice through historic and contemporary representation.

This title is expected to be available in 2012.