The Assault on Communities of Color

[T]he book encourages readers to go beyond the post-racial myth and explore the race-based violence plaguing minority communities, particularly Black communities, today. * Diverse: Issues In Higher Education *
What makes a community? Can we segregate by skin color, or walled off entire cities as in Gaza, and still build responsive and generative social units? We cannot hope to create in the USA the kind of reflective and active society where people learn from each other through dialogue across difference if the dominant white culture refuses a social compact among all members that reflects diversity and solidarity. Sometimes angry, always passionate and principled, the short chapters in Assaults on Communities of Color are like bursts of fire that both illuminate ideas and ignite commitments to critical and inclusive democratic praxis. -- AG Rud, distinguished professor, Washington State University
The Assault on Communities of Color breaks through all the lies, misconceptions, and distortions that fuel the idea that we now live in a post racial state.  Not only does the book explore how race and violence intersect in a myriad of institutional, symbolic, and everyday relations, the authors use this point of analysis to begin a dialogue that is critical, informative, and speaks to the need to develop democratic public spheres and a formative culture in which such a dialogue can take place and move from words, shared values, and ethical responsibility to collective action. The Assault on Communities of Color offers up a signpost and much needed vision that at this particular historical provides a vibrant language, fresh politics, and inspired sense of civic courage. -- Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest
There is a long history of racial, social, and political unrest and injustice in this nation – a historical trauma. Notions about violence have always developed alongside socioeconomic and race-based realities. Views of the nature of violence are rooted in racist and classist worldviews that often place the deficiencies of certain groups’ inability to disrupt racism, cycles of poverty, and educational inequities and the architects of their own urban casualties (Riessman, 1962; Moynihan, 1965. Issues in Ferguson, Missouri and other communities are the newest failure of the larger society to substantially address the systemic issues of racial injustice and violation of human rights in communities of color in the United States.  This volume provides a critical look at issues such as racism, community segregation, whiteness and other hegemonies and how they re/produce injustice and violence; but also how space, place, and institutionalism produce and maintain white dominance and violence. This is the right volume during a time of wrongs. -- Noelle Witherspoon Arnold, PhD, associate professor, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, University of Missouri-Columbia
We live in a time when racial tension is bubbling up and seeping through the cracks in the sidewalk. It is imperative that we as educators take to the streets and classrooms to change the hearts and minds of young people to provide opportunities to and solidify the dignity of all. In The Assault on Communities of Color, Fasching-Varner, Hartlep, and their colleagues make it crystal clear that we cannot wait any longer to stand up, and rise up, against injustice. -- Marybeth Gasman, University of Pennsylvania
Searing, gritty, and jarring—this collection of essays brings together theoretical complexity with personal reflections to propel forward the public dialogue on race and violence in the United States today.  Fasching-Varner, Hartlep, and colleagues implore us to grapple with the intricacies and the excesses of the profoundly normalized nature of the Assault on Communities of Color, even while taking hope in collectivizings that permeate the moment that we are in as being nothing short of building movement for anti-oppressive change.  Read this book and join the movement. -- Kevin Kumashiro, dean,University of San Francisco School of Education, author of "Bad Teacher!: How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture"