The Gender of Racial Politics and Violence in America: Lynching, Prison Rape, and the Crisis of Masculinity (Counterpoints)

Perhaps not since Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 classic An American Dilemma has a book appeared as synoptic and unsettling as The Gender of Racial Politics and Violence in America. Here William F. Pinar elucidates the great «American dilemma», that «peculiar» institution of racial subjugation, especially its gendered – and specifically «queer» – psychosexual dynamics. Explicating in detail two imprinting episodes in American racial history – lynching and prison rape – Pinar argues that the gender of racial politics and violence in America is in some fundamental sense «queer». This book will be of interest to students in education, cultural studies, African American studies, women’s and gender studies, and history.