In this book, the author chronicles three years in the life of a predominately Latino alternative high school for adolescents who have been pushed out or dropped out of school. He shares the story of these students, their teachers, and himself as they work toward transformation and critical consciousness.

This lively and thoughtful book explores what it means to be black in an allegedly postracial America

This lively and thoughtful book explores what it means to be black in an allegedly postracial America

“Heartbreaking and uplifting… a searing book about race and prejudice in America… brims with insights that only someone who has lived on both sides of the racial divide could gain.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer “A triumph of storytelling as well as a triumph of spirit.”—Alex Kotlowitz, award-winning author of There Are No Children Here As a child in 1950s segregated Virginia, Gregory Howard Williams grew up believing he was white. But when the family business failed and his parents’ marriage fell apart, Williams discovered that his dark-skinned father, who had been passing as Italian-American, was half black. The family split up, and Greg, his younger brother, and their father moved to Muncie, Indiana, where the young boys learned the truth about their heritage. Overnight, Greg Williams became black. In this extraordinary and powerful memoir, Williams recounts his remarkable journey along the color line and illuminates the contrasts between the black and white worlds: one of privilege, opportunity and comfort, the other of deprivation, repression, and struggle. He tells of the hostility and prejudice he encountered all too often, from both blacks and whites, and the surprising moments of encouragement and acceptance he found from each. Life on the Color Line is a uniquely important book. It is a wonderfully inspiring testament of purpose, perseverance, and human triumph. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

"Across the Color Line: Reporting 25 Years in Black Cincinnati pulls together newspaper reporter Mark Curnutte's stories published in The Cincinnati Enquirer over a 25-year period starting in 1993. With hard-won insights learned from years of in-the-community reporting, Curnutte describes the African American experience through personality and neighborhood profiles, the community institutions, historical perspectives and issue stories. The anthology tells a sweeping narrative of a city suffering and maturing through turn-of-the-century racial growing pains, increased racial sophistication and diversity, and Curnutte's personal journey as a white man and reporting making the intentional decision to work and live across the color line"--

Melissa McFadden always wanted to be an officer when she grew up--to help people. As she left the disciplined, rule driven, world of the Air Force Security Services and landed her dream job in the Columbus, Ohio Division of Police, she learned that policing was something very different than what she had always dreamed it would be. As a Black woman from the coal country of West Virginia she found herself confronting a big city racist police culture that was born in the slave patrols of Reconstruction, emboldened through the Jim Crow era, challenged in the Civil Rights era and still gaining momentum in the Black Lives Matter era. She walked a thin Black line each day that divided her ability to defend her community against police brutality from her ability to defend herself against discrimination on the job. Her memoir is about her journey through the thicket of racist union contracts, unfair assignment practices, and discriminatory disciplinary decisions. She shares how racism hides within police culture, because the purpose of policing has never shed its original focus-a war on Black people. She never imagined the day that she would be standing in solidarity with young Black activists and their white allies, holding a sign saying Police Reform Now, while shouting BLACK LIVES MATTER! Her voice was silenced for over twenty years of her career through threats of retaliation that included taking her entire pension from her. She has fought, cried, sued, mentored, and demanded justice for her Black colleagues and the Black people of Columbus. And now she can show you her efforts and her failures in hopes that the more you know the more you can be part of the solution that is so long overdue.

Through in-depth interviews with individuals from black-white multiracial families, and insightful sociological analysis, Heather M. Dalmage examines the challenges faced by people living in such families and explores how their experiences demonstrate the need for rethinking race in America. She examines the lived reality of race in the ways multiracial family members construct and describe their own identities and sense of community and politics. Their lack of language to describe their multiracial existence, along with their experience of coping with racial ambiguity and with institutional demands to conform to a racially divided, racist system is the central theme of Tripping on the Color Line.