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Available From UC Press
A Field Guide to White Supremacy
Drawing explicit lines across time and a broad spectrum of violent acts to provide the definitive field guide for understanding and opposing white supremacy in America
Hate racial violence exclusion and racist laws receive breathless media coverage but such attention focuses on distinct events that gain our attention for twenty-four hours. The events are presented as episodic one-offs unfortunate but uncanny exceptions perpetrated by lone wolves extremists or individuals suffering from mental illness—and then the news cycle moves on. If we turn to scholars and historians for background and answers we often find their knowledge siloed in distinct academic subfields rarely connecting current events with legal histories nativist insurgencies or centuries of misogynist anti-Black anti-Latino anti-Asian and xenophobic violence. But recent hateful actions are deeply connected to the past—joined not only by common perpetrators but by the vast complex of systems histories ideologies and personal beliefs that comprise white supremacy in the United States.
Gathering together a cohort of researchers and writers A Field Guide to White Supremacy provides much-needed connections between violence present and past. This book illuminates the career of white supremacist and patriarchal violence in the United States ranging across time and impacted groups in order to provide a working volume for those who wish to recognize understand name and oppose that violence. The Field Guide is meant as an urgent resource for journalists activists policymakers and citizens illuminating common threads in white supremacist actions at every scale from hate crimes and mass attacks to policy and law. Covering immigration antisemitism gendered violence lynching and organized domestic terrorism the authors reveal white supremacy as a motivating force in manifold parts of American life. The book also offers a sampling of some of the most recent scholarship in this area in order to spark broader conversations between journalists and their readers teachers and their students and activists and their communities.
A Field Guide to White Supremacy will be an indispensable resource in paving the way for politics of alliance in resistance and renewal.
Hate racial violence exclusion and racist laws receive breathless media coverage but such attention focuses on distinct events that gain our attention for twenty-four hours. The events are presented as episodic one-offs unfortunate but uncanny exceptions perpetrated by lone wolves extremists or individuals suffering from mental illness—and then the news cycle moves on. If we turn to scholars and historians for background and answers we often find their knowledge siloed in distinct academic subfields rarely connecting current events with legal histories nativist insurgencies or centuries of misogynist anti-Black anti-Latino anti-Asian and xenophobic violence. But recent hateful actions are deeply connected to the past—joined not only by common perpetrators but by the vast complex of systems histories ideologies and personal beliefs that comprise white supremacy in the United States.
Gathering together a cohort of researchers and writers A Field Guide to White Supremacy provides much-needed connections between violence present and past. This book illuminates the career of white supremacist and patriarchal violence in the United States ranging across time and impacted groups in order to provide a working volume for those who wish to recognize understand name and oppose that violence. The Field Guide is meant as an urgent resource for journalists activists policymakers and citizens illuminating common threads in white supremacist actions at every scale from hate crimes and mass attacks to policy and law. Covering immigration antisemitism gendered violence lynching and organized domestic terrorism the authors reveal white supremacy as a motivating force in manifold parts of American life. The book also offers a sampling of some of the most recent scholarship in this area in order to spark broader conversations between journalists and their readers teachers and their students and activists and their communities.
A Field Guide to White Supremacy will be an indispensable resource in paving the way for politics of alliance in resistance and renewal.
Kathleen Belew is a historian of the present and leading expert on the white power movement, vigilante violence, and political extremism. Her first book, Bring the War Home, has been discussed on Fresh Air, Newshour, Frontline, and in the New York Times.
Ramón A. Gutiérrez has written extensively on the history of race, gender, and sexuality in Latin American and among Latina/os in the US, offering courses on these topics at the University of Chicago.
Ramón A. Gutiérrez has written extensively on the history of race, gender, and sexuality in Latin American and among Latina/os in the US, offering courses on these topics at the University of Chicago.
"This timely and well-curated book analyzes a broad range of white nationalist nativist and other violent authoritarian forces demonstrating their centrality to the development of the US. Given the extraordinary events of the last five years in particular in which white nationalist groups have emerged as a powerful force within US politics and social debates the book could not be more urgent and necessary."—Daniel HoSang author of A Wider Type of Freedom: How Struggles for Racial Justice Liberate Everyone
"A timely important and beautifully executed accomplishment. The uniformly high quality of the entries the expansive scope of the histories under consideration and the editors' success in marshaling essays that are diverse in voice and method but completely unified in spirit provide a cohesive start for civic discussion that connects the dots. Our civic life needs this and the world would be a better place if our legislators teachers and journalists were to read it."—Matthew Frye Jacobson author of Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America
"An invaluable resource for journalists educators policymakers or people who simply want to understand the deep roots and wide reach of white supremacy in this country. This book is badly needed to dispel the myth that acts of racial religious and gender violence and hate exist in a vacuum. The authors bring their deep knowledge of white power movements to illuminate the dire threat we as a nation face from groups that are organized and determined to undermine the very idea of a diverse and pluralistic America."—Lulu Garcia-Navarro host of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday
"Intellectual history can move like geologic time: long periods of stasis punctuated by abrupt dramatic change. After centuries of defense and denial we’re now living an earthshaking rush to finally grapple with white supremacy. This is the book to survey lands collapsing and new vistas rising."—Ian F. Haney López author of Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class Winning Elections and Saving America
"A Field Guide to White Supremacy is as urgent an intervention as the problem it addresses. Incisive erudite and driven by a relentlessly democratic ethic these essays are crucial to understanding a cruel metastatic doctrine that looms among our most pressing national concerns."––Jelani Cobb staff writer at the New Yorker and author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress
"A timely important and beautifully executed accomplishment. The uniformly high quality of the entries the expansive scope of the histories under consideration and the editors' success in marshaling essays that are diverse in voice and method but completely unified in spirit provide a cohesive start for civic discussion that connects the dots. Our civic life needs this and the world would be a better place if our legislators teachers and journalists were to read it."—Matthew Frye Jacobson author of Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America
"An invaluable resource for journalists educators policymakers or people who simply want to understand the deep roots and wide reach of white supremacy in this country. This book is badly needed to dispel the myth that acts of racial religious and gender violence and hate exist in a vacuum. The authors bring their deep knowledge of white power movements to illuminate the dire threat we as a nation face from groups that are organized and determined to undermine the very idea of a diverse and pluralistic America."—Lulu Garcia-Navarro host of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday
"Intellectual history can move like geologic time: long periods of stasis punctuated by abrupt dramatic change. After centuries of defense and denial we’re now living an earthshaking rush to finally grapple with white supremacy. This is the book to survey lands collapsing and new vistas rising."—Ian F. Haney López author of Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class Winning Elections and Saving America
"A Field Guide to White Supremacy is as urgent an intervention as the problem it addresses. Incisive erudite and driven by a relentlessly democratic ethic these essays are crucial to understanding a cruel metastatic doctrine that looms among our most pressing national concerns."––Jelani Cobb staff writer at the New Yorker and author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress