| 9780393254228 |
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Summary
Summary
America likes to tell itself that it inhabits a postracial world, yet nearly every empirical measure--wealth, unemployment, incarceration, school segregation--reveals that racial inequality has barely improved since 1968, when Richard Nixon became our first "law and order" president. With the clarity and originality that distinguished his prescient bestseller, Twilight of the Elites, Chris Hayes upends our national conversation on policing and democracy in a book of wide-ranging historical, social, and political analysis.
Hayes contends our country has fractured in two: the Colony and the Nation. In the Nation, we venerate the law. In the Colony, we obsess over order, fear trumps civil rights, and aggressive policing resembles occupation. A Colony in a Nation explains how a country founded on justice now looks like something uncomfortably close to a police state. How and why did Americans build a system where conditions in Ferguson and West Baltimore mirror those that sparked the American Revolution?
A Colony in a Nation examines the surge in crime that began in the 1960s and peaked in the 1990s, and the unprecedented decline that followed. Drawing on close-hand reporting at flashpoints of racial conflict, as well as deeply personal experiences with policing, Hayes explores cultural touchstones, from the influential "broken windows" theory to the "squeegee men" of late-1980s Manhattan, to show how fear causes us to make dangerous and unfortunate choices, both in our society and at the personal level. With great empathy, he seeks to understand the challenges of policing communities haunted by the omnipresent threat of guns. Most important, he shows that a more democratic and sympathetic justice system already exists--in a place we least suspect.
A Colony in a Nation is an essential book--searing and insightful--that will reframe our thinking about law and order in the years to come.
Author Notes
Chris Hayes is the Emmy Award-winning host of All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, the New York Times best-selling author of Twilight of the Elites, and an editor-at-large at The Nation. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and children.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Hayes (Twilight of the Elites), host of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes, has written a laser-focused, necessary book about U.S. race relations, primarily the black experience, and law and order as they are experienced across the country. Hayes's main assertion is that the criminal justice system creates two separate Americas with borders drawn along racial lines-the "nation," or white America, with methods of policing characteristic of a democracy that respects the basic rights of its citizenry, and the "colony," black America, which is policed like an occupied state, trampling on the civil liberties of its inhabitants. Hayes's book has a strong through-line comparing the concepts of law and order. Law is defined in the commonly understood sense, while order is explained as a tool used by the state, through the police, to maintain the status quo. The author also ties in the related problem of our status as the most incarcerated nation in the world and why this punitive system is ineffective. This is an important, persuasive book that, if read, can help Americans begin to heal the divide between these two nations. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice these are just three of many young black men whose deaths at the hands of police officers have brought an incendiary confluence of racial profiling and criminal injustice to the forefront of American political discourse. The U.S. is deeply divided on many levels, prompting Emmy Award-winning MSNBC news anchor and best-selling author Hayes (Twilight of the Elites, 2012) to use the metaphor of a colony within a nation to illustrate the tactics employed throughout our judicial network by police, prosecutors, and politicians who further alienate black and white citizenry from each other. Nations pursue law and order according to principles of democracy, Hayes posits, while colonies are treated like occupied territories, subject to the capricious whims of those in charge. As a journalist and commentator, Hayes has covered the violence that erupted in Baltimore, Ferguson, and Cleveland in the wake of police shootings and analyzed the reasons for and reactions to police aggression and legal indifference. Writing with clarity, intelligence, and compassion, Hayes deftly illuminates the complex state of affairs that has evolved since the 1960s civil rights protests, and resulted in the current backlash. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Popular TV host Hayes will tour the country in concert with a vigorous multimedia marketing and publicity campaign.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2017 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Hayes makes it clear that the titular colony refers to America's black community, and he explores here the very different forces at play, especially the law enforcement and criminal justice systems. His examination of these structures in places like Ferguson, MO, and Baltimore reveal very different experiences for people of color, born of policies created out of fear. He draws a parallel to the forces that the Founding Fathers encountered under British rule and also provides some well-researched conclusions on the economics of racism and colonization. By the end of this work, he gives listeners some hope that a better system is possible but not without a shift in the "law and order" mentality many espouse. Hayes is the natural choice to narrate his material, as he has been honed on television to be clear and animated. At five hours, this book is a quick listen and leaves you wanting to seek more on this topic. An appendix with further readings would have been a great addition. VERDICT Recommended for all public libraries. ["This readable and thoughtful work will appeal to readers interested in civil rights and criminal justice and is especially insightful when considering why Colonists originally rebelled in 1776": LJ 2/1/17 starred review of the Norton hc.]-Gretchen Pruett, New Braunfels P.L., TX © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
