Author Meets Critics: Rogers Smith and Desmond King, "America's New Racial Battle Lines"

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

Rogers Smith and Desmond King's forthcoming new book, America's New Racial Battle Lines: Protect versus Repair, promises to be a critically important analysis of the shifting terrain of racial politics in the United States. Building on their decades-long project to chart the contending racial policy that have shaped American politics across different eras, they argue historical disputes over colorblind versus race-conscious policies have given way to new lines of conflict. Today’s conservatives promise to protect traditionalist, predominantly white, Christian Americans against what they call the “radical” Left. Meanwhile, today’s progressives seek not just to integrate American institutions but to more fully transform and “repair” pervasive systemic racism.

To discuss the book, we have assembled a distinguished panel of scholars of race and American political behavior (Ashley Jardine and Candis Watts Smith), social movements (Omar Wasow), American political development and public policy (Jacob Hacker), and American conservatism (Damon Linker).

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Chair

• Robert C. Lieberman Johns Hopkins University

Presenters

• Jacob S. Hacker Yale University

• Ashley E. Jardina The University of Virginia

• Damon Linker University of Pennsylvania

• Candis Watts Smith Duke University

• Omar Wasow UC Berkeley

• Rogers M. Smith University of Pennsylvania

• Desmond King University of Oxford