Chapter 2 examines Joel Augustus Rogers’ semi-autobiographical debate novel From “Superman” to Man (1917), which features an erudite Pullman porter methodically debunking the anti-Black racist arguments of a Southern senator traveling on his route. Signifying on the pseudoscientific foundations of Jim Crow bigotry, the New Negro porter turns what Eric Lott calls the “black mirror” back on the senator to reveal, ultimately, the utter abjection of white supremacy. Having already “proved” the Negro’s humanity through his erudition, the porter’s explicit reading of a gruesome lynching becomes a catalyst for the senator’s “liminal crucible” moment, a moral transformation great enough that he offers the porter a job in his film studio now devoted to producing some films that “create a better understanding of the Negro.” By examining the revisions Rogers made to his 1917 novel in his 1923 serialization, I reveal Rogers’ increasing anger over the growing brutality and frequency of white mob violence as well as the race-baiting newspapers that fomented it.

Chapter 3 argues that the virulent racism Ghanaians – students, diplomats, and workers – faced in the United States, Bulgaria, the Soviet Union, and Ghana were vital in creating and shaping a global Ghanaian national consciousness. These were, what I argue, “Racial Citizenship Moments.” Calls for protection to the Ghanaian state against racism in many walks of life were central to articulating ideas of citizenship and (re-)framing the state’s duty to its people. This bottom-up pressure, bottom-up nationalism, and social diplomacy shaped the functions of the Ghanaian state apparatus, both domestically and internationally. In addition, the chapter also seeks to dispel the myth that racism functioned ‘differently’ in the Eastern bloc. It moves past the idea of Soviet and Eastern European exceptionalism, particularly its estrangement from the processes and movement of white supremacist ideas. The spread of people and ideas – a truism in life – meant that the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were not inoculated from white supremacist ideas. While the Communist Bloc’s foreign policy statements and private diplomatic cables expressed racial equality and solidarity, through the trope of “Black Peril,” I show how anti-Black racism in the Eastern Bloc looked uncannily familiar to other parts of the globe and how its reproduction in the Eastern Bloc was devastating to Black subjects.

Chapter 1 examines the fragility and unenviability of Black independence. It shows how Black Marxists and anticolonial figures navigated and negotiated Soviet and communist linkages from the 1940s to the 1960s against attempts by white Western imperial and colonial powers to weaponize the term “communism” to suffocate anticolonial movements and suspend Black independence. Once independent, the chapter shows that the Ghanaian government’s wariness of hastily establishing relations with the Soviet government arose not only from Western pressure but from genuine fears of swapping one set of white colonizers for another. The chapter then questions the totalizing analytical purchase of using the Cold War paradigm to understand the relationship between Black African nations and white empires – whether capitalist or communist – during the 20th century. It posits that a framework highly attentive to race and racism in international relations and diplomatic history must also be employed to understand the diplomatic actions of African states during this period. By so doing, Chapter 1 follows other pioneering works to argue that Ghanaians and the early African states had agency and dictated the paces and contours of their relationship with the USSR and other white imperial states.

Just three years after the passage of the federal income tax, Congress enacted the federal estate tax. Instrumental in its passage were Sen. Furnifold Simmons (D-NC) and Rep. Claude Kitchin (D-NC). Both had represented the Second Congressional District, known as the Black Second. Both orchestrated the infamous 1898 election that effectively ended Black voting in North Carolina for sixty years. One cannot ignore this connection.

Amidst the Great Depression, Congress reprised the federal gift tax and stiffened the estate tax in a desperate search for tax revenues. Over the next forty years, the two taxes functioned relatively effectively at taxing intergenerational wealth transfers, raising revenue, and limiting the concentration of wealth. Although loopholes remained unchecked, the top tax rate stayed at 70 percent for decades.

Over the past half century, one that accords with the post-Civil Rights period, Congress has continually and relentless dismantled the wealth transfer tax system. Since 1976, real household wealth has tripled while the rate of filers, real taxable estates, and real collected taxes have all declined.

This dismantling will assure that more of the wealth received from the past will get transferred to advantage mostly Whites in the future, thereby cementing White supremacy.

Sometime in 2021, the US economy became capable of making every American household a millionaire if wealth is spread equally. Of course, it is not. Indeed, it is one of the most unequally divided economies in the world. Whereas the typical Black household earns 60 percent of what Whites make, Blacks typically hold less than 10 percent of the wealth of Whites.

The tight link between wealth and race that is exhibited in the current racial wealth gap is simply the reflection of our nation’s history. From the earliest beginnings through constitutional protections of chattel slavery, disparate land policies, support of legalized segregation, and redlining, federal policies have created and cemented the link between wealth and race.

For many reasons, White Americans fail to acknowledge the yawning gulf that is the modern racial wealth gap. This failure along with the innate power that personal wealth brings creates a system that meets the requirements of Wilkerson’s caste system as well as offering a case study in stratification economics.

Six tax expenditures can trace their existence to the enactment of the federal income tax. Swept into office after nearly a half century of Republican control, Democrats moved quickly to enact a tax on incomes. Tasked to write a draft law, Rep. Cordell Hull (D-TN) wrote a fifteen-page bill that experienced modest resistance and was largely adopted. Simultaneously, the Wilson Administration was moving to segregate the federal bureaucracy as lynchings and Confederate monument building reached their apex across the country.

While all the tax expenditures clearly favored the wealthy, almost all were enacted for other equally persuasive reasons. Life insurance benefits and charitable giving were given preferential treatment as they would limit demands on public services. Preferences given to state and local bond income as well as state and local tax payments were made in deference to constitutional concerns.

Over time, these tax expenditures have taken on increased value and generated powerful allies. Attempts to close the estate step up in basis exclusion and later the exclusion on capital gains were quickly rescinded.

Most of the changes over the past half century of supposed racial reconciliation has been to make these expenditures more valuable to wealthy, mostly White households.

The ultimate cause of the American Civil War was White supremacy, not simply slavery. That prejudice brought on war and also affected the treatment of prisoners of war and the consequences of Southern surrender. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the incorporation of Blacks into the Union army infuriated the Confederates and doomed the traditional practices of the cartels. When Black troops were recruited, Confederates refused to exchange captured Black soldiers, deeming them to be escaped slaves. The North responded by ending exchange and parole altogether. Now prisoners on both sides endured long-term confinement in prisoner of war camps, a practice that became the rule in Western warfare. The surrender of the Confederacy came through the surrender of its individual armies because the state was inoperative. But, although the conventional war ended in 1865, the fighting did not cease. Surrender transformed the conventional conflict into White supremacist terrorism and insurgency during Reconstruction, 1865–77. Ultimately, the will of the federal government and the Northern population tired of trying to establish racial equality in the South, and the occupation of the South ended. In an important sense, the South ultimately won by preserving White supremacy in its government, society, and culture.

On August 22, 2017, Judge Tashima issued a blistering ruling finding that state representatives created the law and banned MAS based upon racial animus and partisan political gain in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of Mexican American students in TUSD. There was a massive local and national uproar, celebrating the end of this racist law. Though different Tucson factions claimed shared victory due to the ruling, persistent community divisions remained. This chapter details the post-ruling celebrations, the continued community divisions, a summary of where the key actors in this drama ended up, the current state of MAS in TUSD, and the national Ethnic Studies renaissance that the Tucson struggle spawned. Of equal importance, this chapter details how the lessons of the MAS controversy can help inform the work of those challenging Critical Race Theory bans throughout the country.

White extremism has been a rising trend in North American and European countries over the past two decades. Despite the systemically engrained privileged status of people who identify as white in US society, one of the causes of white extremism is a perceived threat of being sidelined/disadvantaged by individuals with non-white identities. For example, the mainstreaming of the great replacement theory among right-wing media outlets and politicians demonstrates this perception. We examine this perception, and white extremism rhetoric and radicalization broadly, within the context of social exclusion at both the individual and systemic levels. We further embed this analysis within theories and research focused on concepts of “the self,” social identity, and related psychological needs usually impacted by social exclusion. We recommend researchers and practitioners interested in extremism and radicalization to intentionally consider self-related theories and constructs going forward.

Analyzing major and lesser-known utopian and dystopian literature from 1945-present, we define white supremacy as both a regime of exploitation and violence by people of European descent upon others deemed to be outside of whiteness and a process of centering whiteness. We look at the relationship between white supremacy and American culture from the period through two main trends. The first asserts white supremacy in either a default form assuming the centrality of whiteness or an explicit form that calls for white supremacist revolution. Texts here range from Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 to Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold to McCarthy’s The Road to the notorious Turner Diaries. The second trend directly challenges white supremacy, including some notable texts such as Butler’s Parable series to a flood of post-Black Lives Matter works such as Ruff’s Lovecraft Country to Coates’s Between the World and Me to short works by adrienne maree brown and others.

Black youth who attend school in non-Black spaces do not always feel welcomed or comfortable, and they regularly experience everyday racism that is interpersonal and institutional. Young Black changemakers use multiple strategies to resist racism. Resistance involved creating safe spaces in schools they could claim as their own, holding administrators accountable, and raising awareness of Black culture and experiences. Black youth noted the importance of authentic allies in non-Black spaces, and also shared the burdens that arise from the emotional labor of being in non-Black spaces and engaging in racial justice work.

This chapter critiques Western and scientific philanthropy scholarly understanding of the nonprofit sector. It argues that this narrow analysis of nonprofits limits our understanding of Muslim prosocial behaviors that are less dominant in the academic literature. By examining the tenets and roots of Muslim prosocial action, we see how this specific view of social good has been limited in the broader conversation, which in turn has limited our understanding of the nonprofit sector across the world. The chapter also explores Muslim prosocial action by examining its theological and cultural sources to create a broader conception of giving behavior within an Islamic context, and discusses the challenges associated with strict adherence to the Western definition of the nonprofit sector for scholars who want to include Muslim perspectives and charitable acts. Ultimately, it suggests a framework that nonprofit-sector scholars can use to move beyond Western-centric definitions of prosocial action to include other cultural and faith perspectives. This approach treats Muslim prosocial action as a practice-oriented religious tradition.

Chapter 10 engages the global and historical attributes of lynching and situates the practice within a North American environment of anti-Black terror. This chapter links national lawmakers who advocated for White supremacy to the increase and severity of violence against Black individuals (and others), surveying how violence and the construction of race served to create and uphold relationships of power and economy in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. It centers on Congressional discussions in the Reconstruction era and the brutal death of Lee Walker, a Black man, at the hands of a White mob in 1893. The creation of a new racial order, one that harkened to earlier forms of racial intimidation, was intricately connected to work. Violence ensured that the linkages between low-status labor, poverty, and skin color remained unbroken.