Understanding Racial Inequality in the Obama Era
A Primer
Dedrick Dunbar Muhammad; foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich

published 2010 • 4 1/4" x 7" • 208 pages
ISBN 9781566568234 • paperback • $10.00

"Many progressives take comfort in the election of a black president, believing that the long night of racial inequality could be over.  Others are stymied by the lack of progress.  Dedrick Muhammad’s new book is a reality check and a road map.  For the past decade, he has been conducting research on the effects of public policies on racial equity.  Here, he analyzes the current race gaps and how they were created, and suggests transformative policy changes to expand our democracy in the 21st century."  
—Meizhu Lui, director, Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative, Insight Center for Community Economic Development

“Dedrick Muhammad’s "Understanding Racial Inequality in the Obama Era" covers everything one needs to know about racial inequality in the United States. Where it came from, why it persists, and, most importantly, what we need to do to eliminate it. This information is crucial if we wish to move beyond race to a more perfect union.”
—Algernon Austin, director of the Race, Ethnicity and Economy Program of the Economic Policy Institute
 
"The work that Dedrick Muhammad has done on the intersection of race and class in the United States is the most cutting edge and important analysis on the current landscape. My frustration has always been that it's not more widely discussed. That is about to change and it simply couldn't happen soon enough."
—Dave Zirin

An essential volume by an experienced scholar and analyst

Understanding Racial Inequality in the Obama Era is a brief yet thorough review of racial inequality in contemporary multicultural America.  It gives a realist's assessment of the successes and failures of the civil rights movement and lays out what is necessary to make racial inequality a problem of the past. This primer goes beyond simplistic analysis of a post-racial America or the idea that a black president solves the problems of black Americans. Instead, it provides a broad
narrative of how the nation has consistently been challenged by its racist founding and how a more diverse America is still struggling with the legacy of white supremacy.  

With its strong analysis of racial economic inequality, this book provides a thoughtful starting to point to look at where we are as a country in our ongoing struggle to become "a more perfect union."

Dedrick Dunbar Muhammad is the senior organizer and research associate for the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.

Olive Branch Press

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