The Hidden Rules of Race: Barriers to an Inclusive Economy (Cambridge Studies in Stratification Economics: Economics and Social Identity)

Andrea Flynn is terrific

GREAT READ

If you’re a person who makes decisions from data and statistics, then this is an excellent book.

With their book, “The Hidden Rules of Race,” Andrea Flynn and her various co-editors associated with the progressive Roosevelt Institute, have contributed mightily to a new conversation we need to have in America about what progress means in the 21st Century. The analysis they offer, and bolster with the addition of select articles by allied thought leaders like Darrick Hamilton and john a. powell, is most thoughtful and timely. At its essence, the book argues for meaningful new efforts to encourage a major shift in U.S. economic thinking and policy towards rules and legal concepts that fundamentally encourage and expand mobility and opportunity for poor, working, and middle class Americans who have been mired in stagnation for now nearly 40 years under “Trickle Down” conservative and neoliberal economic priorities. Their analysis keenly surfaces largely unrecognized but still powerful barriers to economic opportunity that bear down especially hard on African American citizens and communities. These include institutional and legal inequities that persist largely under the radar in areas ranging from education and access to capital to predatory lending and intensifying gentrification and housing segregation. Additionally, criminal justice and health are central foci of the book’s attention. The book closes with important insights on key aspects of American democracy and politics that are also compromised in terms of precluding–rather than promoting–opportunity and inclusion; and they offer a range of thought-provoking ideas, strategies, and prospective reforms in law and policy that would more actively facilitate a more winning approach, to better serve both struggling American workers, families, and communities, as well as the larger society and economy. This work is an important complement to recent groundbreaking research supported by the Roosevelt Institute in collaboration with Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz (“Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity,” Stiglitz, J., 2015). The “Hidden Rules of Race” is essential reading for this critically important, transitional moment in American political economy. It is well written, informative, and inspiring. I would give this book the highest possible marks and urge all who are concerned about the recent course of advanced capitalism and governance in the U.S. to purchase and read it.

Sends positive messages about how race is evaluated

The Hidden Rules of Race tells a story that was largely left out of the history classes I attended in both high school and college. A combination of history, sociology, public heath and economics, the book emphasizes that American wealth (in both the South and the North) was built at the expense of black Americans. However, economic solutions will not be sufficient to rebalance the unequal economic, health and voting outcomes for black Americans. By identifying the host of public policies that have led to these unequal outcomes, the work points toward some potential policies that could unstack the deck. This should be a must read by anyone working in policy – in Congress or in local politics.