A Colony In A Nation by Chris Hayes
America likes to tell itself that it inhabits a post-racial world, but nearly every empirical measure—wealth, unemployment, incarceration, school segregation—reveals that racial inequality hasn’t improved since 1968. With the clarity and originality that distinguished his prescient bestseller Twilight of the Elites (“a stunning polemic,” said Ta-Nehisi Coates), award-winning journalist Chris Hayes offers a powerful new framework in which to understand our current crisis.
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. How and why did Americans build a system where conditions in Ferguson and West Baltimore mirror those that sparked the American Revolution?
Blending wide-ranging historical research with political, social, and economic analysis, A Colony in a Nation explains how a Nation founded on justice constructed the Colony—and how it threatens our democracy.
My husband and I just finished the audio book of A Colony In A Nation. It was such a great book! Chris Hayes reading it really made this for me. I can’t imagine listening it in someone else’s voice since we watch him on TV almost every night.
I adore Chris Hayes. He’s such an intelligent, genuine person. The book actually made me laugh at the beginning with his story of getting caught with weed in college. But then things got serious. The book really discusses the differences in our country between black and white. Not just racism, but differences in locations, money, etc. I found a lot of the information to be things discussed in Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give (which we are going to listen to next).
This is an important book that I think everyone should read or listen to. 5 stars for this one. My review is for the audible book, but I also own the hardcover.
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