Books
“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”
— George Orwell (“Why I Write,” Gangrel No. 4, 1946)
Below are various books that I have solo-authored, co-authored, edited, and co-edited that relate to race and media, organizations, politics, nationalism, identity, racism and antiracism, profiling and discrimination, and resistance.
Racialized Media: The Design, Delivery, and Decoding of Race and Ethnicity (New York University Press, 2020)
This volume examines racialized media production (“Design”)—which situates racial representations in the larger media and society; media regulation (“Delivery”)—characterized by marketing and gatekeeping, and; media consumption, (“Decoding”)—how media is received, interpreted, and debated by public audiences.
A Pledge with Purpose: Black Sororities and Fraternities and the Fight for Equality (New York University Press, 2020)
This book charts the arc of the African American experience through the lens of Black fraternities and sororities. The founding impetus for these organizations is intertwined with literary societies, white college groups, black benevolent and secret societies, the black church, and the broader racial milieu at the turn of the 20th Century. Key attention is paid to how these groups engage in civic action, community service, philanthropy, and high scholasticism.
The White Savior Film: Content, Critics, and Consumption
(Temple University Press, 2014)
By examining the content of fifty films, nearly 3,000 reviews, and interviews with viewer focus groups, the book considers the production, distribution, and consumption of white savior films to show how the dominant messages of sacrifice, suffering, and redemption are perceived by both critics and audiences. The White Savior Film shows how we as a society create and understand these films and how they reflect the political and cultural contexts of their time.
Winner, 2016 Southwest Sociological Association Outstanding Publication Award
The Wrongs of the Right: Language, Race, and the Republican Party in the Age of Obama (New York University Press, 2014)
Despite the utopian proclamations that we are now live in a “post-racial” country, the grim reality is that implicit racial biases and structural racism are more entrenched than ever. Hughey and Parks provide an analysis of the political Right and their opposition to Obama from the vantage-point of political rhetoric, a history of the evolution of the two-party system in relation to race, research on race and political ideology, and how coded language is drawn upon and manipulated.
Race and Ethnicity in Secret and Exclusive Social Orders: Blood and Shadow
(Taylor and Francis, 2013)
This volume directly addresses the salience of race in private organizations—from secret societies and Greek-letter organizations to mutual aid groups, and civic orders—to illuminate how they are both cause and consequence of colonization, segregation, and subjugation, as well as their roles as both catalysts and impediments to personal excellence, fictive kinship ties, and racial uplift, nationalism, and cohesion.
White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race
(Stanford University Press, 2012)
Matthew Hughey spent over a year with members of a white nationalist group and a white antiracist group. Though he found immediate political differences, he observed surprising similarities. White Bound investigates these dividing lines and offers a unique view of white racial identity.
Co-Winner, 2014 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems
Finalist, 2013 C. Wright Mills Book Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems
Honorable Mention, 2013 Book Award, Association for Humanist Sociology
The Obamas and a (Post)Racial America? (Oxford University Press, 2011)
On November 4, 2008, when Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States, many wondered whether we now live in a “post-racial” America. The book's contributors argue that a more nuanced analysis and measurement of racial attitudes undercuts this assumption. Looking beyond public behaviors and how people describe their own attitudes, the contributors draw from the latest research to show how, despite the Obama family's rapid rise to national prominence, many Americans continue to harbor unconscious biases and support structural inequalities.
Twelve Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today (The New Press, 2010)
Called a book that is filled with “raw testimony intended to vividly capture the invasions of privacy and the assaults on dignity” (Kirkus Reviews), 12 Angry Men features a dozen Black men who tell their personal stories of racially profiling. We hear from Joe Morgan, a former Major League Baseball MVP; Paul Butler, a federal prosecutor; Solomon Moore, a former criminal justice reporter for the New York Times; and King Downing, a former head of the ACLU's racial profiling initiative.
Winner, 2011 PASS Book Award, National Council on Crime and Delinquency
Black Greek-Letter Organizations, 2.0: New Directions in the Study of African American Fraternities and Sororities (University Press of Mississippi, 2011)
This collection pushes those who think about “Black Greek-Letter Organizations” (BGLOs) to engage in empirically-based analysis. In urging to move beyond hunches, conventional wisdom, intuition, and personal experience, the authors address the difficulties that BGLOs have find their place and direction in a world drastically different from the one that witnessed their genesis.