01/09/2017
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.)
A Colony in a Nation
Narrated by Chris Hayes
Chris HayesUnabridged — 5 hours, 0 minutes
A Colony in a Nation
Narrated by Chris Hayes
Chris HayesUnabridged — 5 hours, 0 minutes
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Overview
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-1980sManhattan, 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.
Editorial Reviews
"Terrific and really important."
"Hayes doesn’t shy away from exposing bias where he finds it, which makes this passionate and well-researched account a compelling entry in the growing literature of social injustice."
"[Hayes is] the young left’s most erudite and urgent interpreter."
"Hayes’s forceful analysis…compel[s] readers to wrestle with some very tough questions about the nature of American democracy."
"A thorough exploration of how the ‘tough on crime’ ideology leaves poor isolated minority populations living under a different set of laws."
"A major book, vital for our survival as a nation."
"Hayes is a forceful and eloquent writer…. He offers a clear and useful framework for understanding the current dysfunctions of American society. It’s a brilliant diagnosis, [and] more urgent than ever."
"The first significant theorization on race of the Trump era.... Hayes has a particular talent for examining rather unflinchingly our national ills."
"A Colony in a Nation reminds us that fear of the other, when weaponized and mechanized by the state, usually makes things worse. That’s a lesson Americans of every color would do well to remember."
"An up-to-date (and masterfully interwoven) blend of statistics, history, and analysis."
"A Colony in a Nation is a highly original analysis of America’s arbitrary and erratic criminal justice system. Indeed, by Hayes's lights, the system is not erratic at all—it treats one group of Americans as citizens, and another as the colonized. This is an essential and ground-breaking text in the effort to understand how American criminal justice went so badly awry."
"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."
"Chris Hayes’ ominous account of what’s ailing America… [offers a] rare view into a wide racial and class cross-section of society."
A Colony in a Nation is a highly original analysis of America’s arbitrary and erratic criminal justice system. Indeed, by Hayes's lights, the system is not erratic at all—it treats one group of Americans as citizens, and another as the colonized. This is an essential and ground-breaking text in the effort to understand how American criminal justice went so badly awry.” - Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me
“A timely and impassioned argument for social justice.” - Kirkus
“Important, persuasive… [ A Colony in a Nation ] can help Americans begin to heal.”” - Publishers Weekly
★ 02/01/2017
In his latest work, MSNBC commentator, Nation journalist, and best-selling author (Twilight of the Elites) Hayes uses personal experience, historical research, and field work to explore America's continuing racism. Specifically, he examines how throughout history majority populations have come to see minorities as a problem to be solved, and how fear is used to justify attacks on civil rights. Hayes's thesis is that contemporary America, in light of recent events in Ferguson, MO, and Baltimore, exemplifies its racial past. The United States may have emerged from a former British colony to a country that has finally achieved superpower status, but this nation still has a colony within its midst; for example, African American ghettos. In essence, these comprise a "third world" entity. Hayes maintains that the source of these colonies is "white fear." Aggressive policing puts the nation in the same place as former Colonial authorities, and current incarceration rates exacerbate the issue. VERDICT 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.—William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport
2016-12-14
Profound contrasts in policing and incarceration reveal disparate Americas.MSNBC host and editor at large of the Nation, Hayes (Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, 2013, etc.) expands the investigation of inequality begun in his previous book by focusing on law and order. Offering a persuasive analysis, he distinguishes between the Nation, inhabited by the "affluent, white, elite," and the Colony, largely urban, poor, "overwhelmingly black and brown" but increasingly including working-class whites. The criminal justice system, argues Hayes, is vastly different for each: "One (the Nation) is the kind of policing regime you expect in a democracy; the other (the Colony) is the kind you expect in an occupied land." In the Colony, "real democratic accountability is lacking and police behave like occupying soldiers in restive and dangerous territory." Law enforcement, as noted by law professor Seth Stoughton, takes a "warrior worldview" in which "officers are locked in intermittent and unpredictable combat with unknown but highly lethal enemies." Acknowledging that America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, Hayes traces the country's history of punishment to the experience of European settlers who, "outnumbered and afraid," responded with violence. Between 1993 and 2014, although the crime rate declined significantly, most Americans feel that crime has increased and therefore support aggressive police action. Furthermore, although most crime occurs intraracially, the Nation believes that the Colony is a constant, insidious threat; unmistakably, "we have moved the object of our concern from crime to criminals, from acts to essences." Among other rich democracies, ours is the only one with the death penalty. Whereas in Europe, humane treatment has been widely instituted, in the U.S., perpetrators are treated as unredeemable. "The American justice system is all about wrath and punishment," the author asserts. Arguing for the erasure of borders between Nation and Colony, Hayes admits, regretfully, that such change might fundamentally alter the comfortable sense of order that he, and other members of the Nation, prizes. A timely and impassioned argument for social justice.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170836499 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Recorded Books, LLC |
| Publication date: | 03/21/2017 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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