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Sociology. Nonfiction. HTML: Emmy Award-winning news anchor and New York Times best-selling author Chris Hayes argues that there are really two Americas: a Colony and a Nation. America likes to tell itself that it inhabits a post-racial world, but nearly every empirical measurewealth, unemployment, incarceration, school segregationreveals that racial inequality hasn't improved since 1968. With the clarity and originality that distinguished his prescient bestsellerTwilight of the Elites ("a stunning polemic," said Ta-Nehisi Coates), award-winning journalist Chris Hayes offers a powerful new framework in which to understand our current crisis. 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. How and why did Americans build a system where conditions in Ferguson and West Baltimore mirror those that sparked the American Revolution? Blending wide-ranging historical research with political, social, and economic analysis, A Colony in a Nation explains how a Nation founded on justice constructed the Colonyand how it threatens our democracy..… (more)
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He also gives us a view of the insidious circle of fear and poverty in which so many are engulfed. The catch 22 so many police officers find themselves in, having to take on more than one role, without sufficient training. The double standard of institutions, such as universites that are allowed to police themselves. There is so much covered in this book and Hayes presents this information clearly and easy to understand. Found this eye opening, and though I have no concrete answers I do believe that things need to change. Where to begin is the big question, especially since most politicians seem not to know how to tackle this overwhelming problem, or don't care to try. Simply maddening and heartbreaking.
Hayes' strongest writing comes in the analogies he uses to explain his ideas. The life for Black Americans in the colony is similar to Colonial Americans who rebelled against British rule. While unjust taxation is often credited with starting the American Revolution, Hayes traces the history of excessive force used by the British in an attempt to stop smuggling and make the Colonials pay tariffs being the real source of division. White fear that drives police officers and white gun owners to shoot Black people without thinking is similar to the siege mentality of early colonists living among Native Americans and slave owners who lived in constant fear that they'd be victims of violence from Native Americans and enslaved Africans. The idea of how community policing may work in comparison with the increasingly militarized and punitive policing in America today is demonstrated by how college campuses are policed. Colleges have a considerable amount of disorder and a high level of law breaking that is tolerated and even encouraged in a way that is opposite of how a poor, urban neighborhood is treating.
This is a well-written and thoughtful book and a good one to read to reflect on current events and how we can change things for the better.