Gregory Parks – författare

The United States has taken a long and winding road to racial equality, especially as it pertains to relations between blacks and whites. On November 4, 2008, when Barack Hussein Obama was elected as the forty-fourth President of the United States and first black person to occupy the highest office in the land, many wondered whether that road had finally come to an end. Do we now live in a post-racial nation? According to this book's contributors, a more nuanced and contemporary analysis and measurement of racial attitudes undercuts this assumption. They contend that despite the election of the first black President and rise of his family as possibly the most recognized family in the world, race remains a salient issue-particularly in the United States. 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, anti-black biases. But there are whispers of change. The Obama family's position may yet undermine, at the unconscious level, anti-black attitudes in the United States and abroad. The prominence of the Obamas on the world stage and the image they project may hasten the day when America is indeed post-racial, even at the implicit level.

A practical look at the way racial bias plays out at every level of the legal system, from witness identification and jury selection to prosecutorial behaviour, defence decisions and the way expert witnesses are regarded. Using cutting-edge research from across the social sciences and, in particular, new understandings from psychology of the way prejudice functions in the brain, this new book includes many of the seminal writings to date along with newly commissioned pieces filling in gaps in the present literature.

Questions of differential treatment under the law for people of different races continue to play out in daily life as well as on the front page news. This book examines the psychology behind racial bias in the criminal justice system and offers practical solutions. Edited by brilliant young African-American legal scholars and social scientists, this anthology includes both seminal pieces on the topic as well as brand-new writing that deepens this exciting field of work. Richard Delgado, widely considered the leading figure in Critical Race Theory, provides the foreword.