A01=Richard A. Pride
acceptance
Author_Richard A. Pride
behavior
benefit
biology
black studies
Category=JBSL
Category=JBSL1
Category=JNF
Category=JNL
change
citizens
city
civic forum
court case
culture
demonstration
dominance
education
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
examination
inequality
inferiority
journalist
local politics
meta-narrative
opposition
pay
personal
political science
politician
power
protestor
public school
race
research
rhetorical
school board
social science
story
support
value
white liberal
white oppression
Product details
- ISBN 9780252075940
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 08 Aug 2008
- Publisher: University of Illinois Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Arguing that politics is essentially a contest for meaning and that telling a story is an elemental political act, Richard A. Pride lays bare the history of school desegregation in Mobile, Alabama, to demonstrate the power of narrative in cultural and political change. This book describes the public, personal, and meta-narratives of racial inequality that have competed for dominance in Mobile. Pride begins with a white liberal's quest to desegregate the city's public schools in 1955 and traces which narratives--those of biological inferiority, white oppression, the behavior and values of blacks, and others--came to influence public policy and opinion over four decades. Drawing on contemporaneous sources, he reconstructs the stories of demonstrations, civic forums, court cases, and school board meetings as citizens of Mobile would have experienced them, inviting readers to trace the story of desegregation in Mobile through the voices of politicians, protestors, and journalists and to determine which narratives were indeed most powerful.
Exploring who benefits and who pays when different narratives are accepted as true, Pride offers a step-by-step account of how Mobile's culture changed each time a new and more forceful narrative was used to justify inequality. More than a retelling of Mobile's story of desegregation, The Political Use of Racial Narratives promotes the value of rhetorical and narrative analysis in the social sciences and history.
Richard A. Pride, professor emeritus of political science at Vanderbilt University, is the coauthor of The Burden of Busing: The Politics of Desegregation in Nashville, Tennessee.
