... sprawling yet focused ... clear and engaging. It offers fresh insight to the idea of liberty — an idea that is increasingly at the fore of societal concern. Stovall doesn’t preach; he doesn’t try to convince anyone to come to his side. He offers important context to the history of the development of freedom, and engaging analysis supported by carefully researched evidence. Stovall gives us all the information we need, and then challenges us to look deeper ... an historical analysis; it is not a polemic — Stovall has no obligation to provide a blueprint for a way forward ... Perhaps the best way to read Stovall’s history is to use the book as an object through which to examine our own experiences of liberty. White Freedom has much to tell us, if we let it, about how racism has been built into so many of our systems and institutions, and about how what we see as freedom isn’t really freedom for all.
Stovall could not have foreseen his book's release coming on the heels of such a terrifyingly and precisely relevant event ... [Stovall's] arguments are extremely convincing, at least to me, and for anyone doubting his sources, there are some 70 pages of notes at the end of the book that detail his extensive research material.
Stovall is meticulous about parsing historical events, global ideologies, and the usurped symbols of freedom to show that the freedom of one group of people has long been seen as dependent on the oppression of other groups ... The pointed research represented in White Freedom strengthens the case that concepts of freedom and liberty in the United States have always worked as intended—to uphold the systemic racism of the land.
In his intellectual archaeology, the author neither excuses nor cancels historical racism ... Although academically grounded, the author avoids extended disputes with other scholars. Each chapter has a preface and conclusion, as does the book itself, so Stovall often announces his intentions and the completion of each intention. This structure may put off some nonscholarly readers, but the frame successfully holds together a complex argument and a wide range of sources and examples ... This cogent study of ideas of race and freedom has added relevance and crossover potential in today’s political landscape.
