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Summary
Summary
New York Times best-selling author and Emmy Award-winning news anchor Chris Hayes argues that there are really two Americas: a Colony and a Nation.America likes to tell itself that it inhabits a postracial world, yet nearly every empirical measure--wealth, unemployment, incarceration, school segregation--reveals that racial inequality has barely improved since 1968, when Richard Nixon became our first "law and order" president. With the clarity and originality that distinguished his prescient bestseller, Twilight of the Elites, Chris Hayes upends our national conversation on policing and democracy in a book of wide-ranging historical, social, and political analysis. Hayes contends our country has fractured in two: the Colony and the Nation. In the Nation, we venerate the law. In the Colony, we obsess over order, fear trumps civil rights, and aggressive policing resembles occupation. A Colony in a Nation explains how a country founded on justice now looks like something uncomfortably close to a police state. How and why did Americans build a system where conditions in Ferguson and West Baltimore mirror those that sparked the American Revolution?A Colony in a Nation examines the surge in crime that began in the 1960s and peaked in the 1990s, and the unprecedented decline that followed. Drawing on close-hand reporting at flashpoints of racial conflict, as well as deeply personal experiences with policing, Hayes explores cultural touchstones, from the influential "broken windows" theory to the "squeegee men" of late-1980sManhattan, to show how fear causes us to make dangerous and unfortunate choices, both in our society and at the personal level. With great empathy, he seeks to understand the challenges of policing communities haunted by the omnipresent threat of guns. Most important, he shows that a more democratic and sympathetic justice system already exists--in a place we least suspect.A Colony in a Nation is an essential book--searing and insightful--that will reframe our thinking about law and order in the years to come.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Hayes (Twilight of the Elites), host of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes, has written a laser-focused, necessary book about U.S. race relations, primarily the black experience, and law and order as they are experienced across the country. Hayes's main assertion is that the criminal justice system creates two separate Americas with borders drawn along racial lines-the "nation," or white America, with methods of policing characteristic of a democracy that respects the basic rights of its citizenry, and the "colony," black America, which is policed like an occupied state, trampling on the civil liberties of its inhabitants. Hayes's book has a strong through-line comparing the concepts of law and order. Law is defined in the commonly understood sense, while order is explained as a tool used by the state, through the police, to maintain the status quo. The author also ties in the related problem of our status as the most incarcerated nation in the world and why this punitive system is ineffective. This is an important, persuasive book that, if read, can help Americans begin to heal the divide between these two nations. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Profound contrasts in policing and incarceration reveal disparate Americas.MSNBC host and editor at large of the Nation, Hayes (Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, 2013, etc.) expands the investigation of inequality begun in his previous book by focusing on law and order. Offering a persuasive analysis, he distinguishes between the Nation, inhabited by the "affluent, white, elite," and the Colony, largely urban, poor, "overwhelmingly black and brown" but increasingly including working-class whites. The criminal justice system, argues Hayes, is vastly different for each: "One (the Nation) is the kind of policing regime you expect in a democracy; the other (the Colony) is the kind you expect in an occupied land." In the Colony, "real democratic accountability is lacking and police behave like occupying soldiers in restive and dangerous territory." Law enforcement, as noted by law professor Seth Stoughton, takes a "warrior worldview" in which "officers are locked in intermittent and unpredictable combat with unknown but highly lethal enemies." Acknowledging that America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, Hayes traces the country's history of punishment to the experience of European settlers who, "outnumbered and afraid," responded with violence. Between 1993 and 2014, although the crime rate declined significantly, most Americans feel that crime has increased and therefore support aggressive police action. Furthermore, although most crime occurs intraracially, the Nation believes that the Colony is a constant, insidious threat; unmistakably, "we have moved the object of our concern from crime to criminals, from acts to essences." Among other rich democracies, ours is the only one with the death penalty. Whereas in Europe, humane treatment has been widely instituted, in the U.S., perpetrators are treated as unredeemable. "The American justice system is all about wrath and punishment," the author asserts. Arguing for the erasure of borders between Nation and Colony, Hayes admits, regretfully, that such change might fundamentally alter the comfortable sense of order that he, and other members of the Nation, prizes. A timely and impassioned argument for social justice. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice these are just three of many young black men whose deaths at the hands of police officers have brought an incendiary confluence of racial profiling and criminal injustice to the forefront of American political discourse. The U.S. is deeply divided on many levels, prompting Emmy Award-winning MSNBC news anchor and best-selling author Hayes (Twilight of the Elites, 2012) to use the metaphor of a colony within a nation to illustrate the tactics employed throughout our judicial network by police, prosecutors, and politicians who further alienate black and white citizenry from each other. Nations pursue law and order according to principles of democracy, Hayes posits, while colonies are treated like occupied territories, subject to the capricious whims of those in charge. As a journalist and commentator, Hayes has covered the violence that erupted in Baltimore, Ferguson, and Cleveland in the wake of police shootings and analyzed the reasons for and reactions to police aggression and legal indifference. Writing with clarity, intelligence, and compassion, Hayes deftly illuminates the complex state of affairs that has evolved since the 1960s civil rights protests, and resulted in the current backlash. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Popular TV host Hayes will tour the country in concert with a vigorous multimedia marketing and publicity campaign.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE BOOK OF JOAN, by Lidia Yuknavitch. (Harper Perennial, $15.99.) It's 2049, and a satellite colony has been taken over by a despot who has claimed victory over a child-warrior, Joan. The story's narrator, Christine, is determined to honor Joan by burning her story into her own skin. Our reviewer, Jeff Vander Meer, praised this "brilliant and incendiary" novel for its "maniacal invention and page-turning momentum." DEAR FRIEND, FROM MY LIFE I WRITE TO YOU IN YOUR LIFE, by Yiyun Li. (Random House, $16.) Li, an acclaimed MacArthuraward-winning novelist, charts her transformation into a writer in this series of essays. Written over a two-year period when she was critically depressed, this collection considers her relationship to English and her literary forebears, and explores two central questions: Why write? And why live? MY CAT YUGOSLAVIA, by Pajtim Statovci. Translated by David Hackston. (Vintage, $16.95.) In 1980s Yugoslavia, Emine, a young Kosovan bride, flees with her son, Bekim, to Finland. Years later, after growing up an outcast - the boy was not only a refugee, but also gay - Bekim is prodded to confront his family's history by his roommate: a talking cat, whom our reviewer, Téa Obreht, described as "a vainglorious, labile, impulsively abusive bigot." A COLONY IN A NATION, by Chris Hayes. (Norton, $15.95.) Hayes, a white journalist for MSNBC, draws on his childhood growing up in the Bronx to explore race, subjugation and power. He frames his discussion around what he sees as two "distinct regimes" in the United States: "In the Nation, you have rights," he writes. "In the Colony, you have commands." His analysis draws on the country's colonial roots to expose what he sees as a founding hypocrisy: White colonists fought for independence - and the right to subjugate others. I AM FLYING INTO MYSELF: Selected Poems, 1960-2014, by Bill Knott. Edited and with an introduction by Thomas Lux. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.) In poems that touch on estrangement and desire, Knott embraced experimentation and provocation. This posthumous collection is helped along by Lux's introduction and appraisal, including what he called "Knott's high imagination, great skills, singular music and crazy-beautiful heart." THE HOME THAT WAS OUR COUNTRY: A Memoir of Syria, by Alia Malek. (Nation Books, $16.99.) Malek, raised by Syrian-American parents, came to Damascus in 2011 to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, and began reporting in secret on the war. She interviewed citizens and documented their courage; as she restored her family's home, she was forced to confront her fears for Syria's future.
Library Journal Review
Hayes makes it clear that the titular colony refers to America's black community, and he explores here the very different forces at play, especially the law enforcement and criminal justice systems. His examination of these structures in places like Ferguson, MO, and Baltimore reveal very different experiences for people of color, born of policies created out of fear. He draws a parallel to the forces that the Founding Fathers encountered under British rule and also provides some well-researched conclusions on the economics of racism and colonization. By the end of this work, he gives listeners some hope that a better system is possible but not without a shift in the "law and order" mentality many espouse. Hayes is the natural choice to narrate his material, as he has been honed on television to be clear and animated. At five hours, this book is a quick listen and leaves you wanting to seek more on this topic. An appendix with further readings would have been a great addition. VERDICT Recommended for all public libraries. ["This readable and thoughtful work will appeal to readers interested in civil rights and criminal justice and is especially insightful when considering why Colonists originally rebelled in 1776": LJ 2/1/17 starred review of the Norton hc.]-Gretchen Pruett, New Braunfels P.L., TX © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
