Invisible Enemy: The African American Freedom Struggle after 1965

Invisible Enemy outlines how “colorblind” approaches to discrimination ensured the perpetuation of racial inequality in the United States after the 1960s, and how this in turn necessitated further struggles on behalf of black rights in the post–civil rights era. The book examines the hidden forms of racism that survived beyond the 1960s, highlighting their impact on black Americans as well as on American politics and society as a whole. It describes the various forms of black activism –– ignored in many histories of the freedom struggle –– that continued at both national and local levels. The final chapter conceptualizes the post–1960s freedom movement as part of a global struggle for justice in response to the spread of free market capitalism around the world in the late twentieth century. In an approach that aims to deepen readers′ awareness of the nature of the nation’s racial problems, de Jong emphasizes that racism must be understood historically, as the product of specific laws and policies that ensured an unequal status for African Americans. Invisible Enemy illuminates the complexities of modern racism and enhances our understanding of the struggles for racial equality and social justice.

Acknowledgments. Introduction. 1. The Never Ending Story: American Racism from Slavery to the Civil Rights Movement. 2. From the Freedom Movement to Free Markets: Racializing the War on Poverty and Colorblinding Jim Crow. 3. A System without Signs: The Invisible Racism of the Post–Civil Rights Era. 4. Fighting Jim Crow’s Shadow: Struggles for Racial Equality after 1965. 5. To See or Not to See: Debates over Affirmative Action. 6. Is This America? Electoral Politics after the Voting Rights Act. 7 Fir$st Cla$$ Citizen$hip: Struggles for Economic Justice. 8. All Around the World: The Freedom Struggle in a Global Context. Notes. Index.

Greta de Jong is Associate Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her research focuses on the connections between race and class and the ways that African Americans have fought for economic as well as political rights from the end of slavery through the twenty–first century. She is the author of A Different Day: African American Struggles for Justice in Rural Louisiana, 1900––1970 (2002).

"The book is an important contribution in understanding a still largely overlooked period of contemporary history. Highly recommended. All levels/libraries." (Choice , 1 April 2011) "Even so, the thematic unity and clear elucidation of the nature and persistence of systemic racism in American society and of white Americans ′ blindness to it makes the book a valuable study that should engage student audiences and the reading public." (Journal of American History, 1 March 2011)