A Colony in a Nation

by Chris Hayes

Overview

New York Times Bestseller
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

"An essential and groundbreaking text in the effort to understand how American criminal justice went so badly awry." —Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me

In A Colony in a Nation, New York Times best-selling author and Emmy Award–winning news anchor Chris Hayes upends the national conversation on policing and democracy. Drawing on wide-ranging historical, social, and political analysis, as well as deeply personal experiences with law enforcement, Hayes contends that our country has fractured in two: the Colony and the Nation. In the Nation, the law is venerated. In the Colony, fear and order undermine civil rights. With great empathy, Hayes seeks to understand this systemic divide, examining its ties to racial inequality, the omnipresent threat of guns, and the dangerous and unfortunate results of choices made by fear.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393355420
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/06/2018
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	444,583
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Chris Hayes is the Emmy Award–winning host of All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, the New York Times best-selling author of Twilight of the Elites, and an editor-at-large at The Nation. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and children.

Editorial Reviews

"[Hayes is] the young left’s most erudite and urgent interpreter."

Rachel Maddow

"Hayes’s forceful analysis…compel[s] readers to wrestle with some very tough questions about the nature of American democracy."

Khalil Gibran Muhammad

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.)

Publishers Weekly

"The first significant theorization on race of the Trump era.... Hayes has a particular talent for examining rather unflinchingly our national ills."

Salon - Matthew Pulver

"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."

O Magazine - Geoff McKenzie

"A thorough exploration of how the ‘tough on crime’ ideology leaves poor isolated minority populations living under a different set of laws."

Esquire - Patrick Sauer

"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."

Eric Liu

"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."

Christian Science Monitor - Nick Romeo

"A major book, vital for our survival as a nation."

Counterpunch - Charles R. Larson

"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

"Chris Hayes’ ominous account of what’s ailing America… [offers a] rare view into a wide racial and class cross-section of society."

The Week - Ryan Cooper

"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."

Booklist - Carol Haggas

"An up-to-date (and masterfully interwoven) blend of statistics, history, and analysis."

Pacific Standard - Peter C. Baker

"Terrific and really important."

Rebecca Traister

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

From the Publisher

★ 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

Library Journal

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.

Kirkus Reviews