A colony in a nation

Resource Information

The work A colony in a nation represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Waubonsee Community College. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

A colony in a nation

Statement of responsibility

Chris Hayes

Creator

• Hayes, Christopher, 1979-

Subject

• African Americans in criminal justice administration
• Criminal justice, Administration of -- United States
• Discrimination in criminal justice administration
• African Americans in criminal justice administration
• Social justice -- United States
• United States
• United States -- Race relations
• Discrimination in criminal justice administration -- United States

Language

eng

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. MSNBC anchor 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. 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

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

364.3/496073

Index

index present

LC call number

HV9950

LC item number

.H396 2017

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography