Synopses & Reviews
An experienced, award-winning journalist deals forthrightly with what it means to be black in Trump Country.
In A Black Man in Trumpland, South Carolina-based journalist Issac J. Bailey reflects on a wide range of topics that have been increasingly dividing Americans, from police brutality and Confederate symbols to poverty and respectability politics. Bailey has been honing his views on these issues for the past quarter of a century in his professional and private life, which included an eighteen-year stint as a member of a mostly white Evangelical Christian church.
This book speaks to and for the millions of black and brown people throughout the United States who were effectively pushed back to the back of the bus in the Trump era by a media that prioritized the concerns and feelings of the white working class and an administration that made white supremacists giddy, and explains why the country's fate in 2020 and beyond is largely in their hands. It will be an invaluable resource for the everyday reader, as well as political analysts, college professors and students, and political consultants and political campaigns vying for high office.
Review
"Bailey performs a kind of racial spy mission, bringing back intelligence from deep in Trumpland about the kind of thinking that continues to have disastrous consequences for our country....a very important book.” Clifford Thompson, author of What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues
Synopsis
An award-winning journalist deals forthrightly with what it means to be black in Trump Country. In Why Didn't We Riot?, South Carolina-based journalist Issac J. Bailey reflects on a wide range of topics that have been increasingly dividing Americans, from police brutality and Confederate symbols to poverty and respectability politics. Bailey has been honing his views on these issues for the past quarter of a century in his professional and private life, which included an eighteen-year stint as a member of a mostly white Evangelical Christian church.
This book speaks to and for the millions of black and brown people throughout the United States who were effectively pushed back to the back of the bus in the Trump era by a media that prioritized the concerns and feelings of the white working class and an administration that made white supremacists giddy, and explains why the country's fate in 2020 and beyond is largely in their hands. It will be an invaluable resource for the everyday reader, as well as political analysts, college professors and students, and political consultants and political campaigns vying for high office.
Synopsis
In these impassioned, powerful essays, an award-winning journalist deals forthrightly with what it means to be black in Trump's America. South Carolina-based journalist Issac J. Bailey reflects on a wide range of complex, divisive topics--from police brutality and Confederate symbols to respectability politics and white discomfort--which have taken on a fresh urgency with the protest movement sparked by George Floyd's killing. Bailey has been honing his views on these issues for the past quarter of a century in his professional and private life, which included an eighteen-year stint as a member of a mostly white Evangelical Christian church.
Why Didn't We Riot? speaks to and for the millions of black and brown people throughout the United States who were effectively pushed back to the back of the bus in the Trump era by a media that prioritized the concerns and feelings of the white working class and an administration that made white supremacists giddy, and explains why the country's fate in 2020 and beyond is largely in their hands. It will be an invaluable resource for the everyday reader, as well as political analysts, college professors and students, and political consultants and campaigns vying for high office.
About the Author
Issac J. Bailey is an award-winning journalist and the James K. Batten Professor of Communication Studies at Davidson College. He has been published in the Washington Post, Charlotte Observer, Politico Magazine, TIME, The Guardian, and many more, and has appeared on NPR, CNN, and MSNBC. Bailey was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and has taught journalism and applied ethics at Coastal Carolina University. He currently lives in Myrtle Beach with his wife and two children.