... searing ... Cashin has written an astounding book that combines engaging storytelling and powerful empirical evidence to address the civil rights movement’s most pressing piece of unfinished business ... The broad outlines of this story of racial exclusion will be familiar to many readers through the superb work of authors such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Richard Rothstein. But Cashin is also alert to the rising significance of economic discrimination and segregation that disproportionately hurt Black people ... makes a powerful case that 'geography as caste is destroying America.' It will be impossible to heal the soul of the country without addressing the defining problem this extraordinary book illuminates.
In White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality, Sheryll Cashin demonstrates how durable and pervasive anti-Black rhetoric has been in American thought from the days of Thomas Jefferson to the era of Donald Trump ... Cashin believes that the solution lies in “abolition and repair,” to rid America of its caste system .... The argument for redress, for replacing contempt with compassion, brutality with kindness, is a common one, and Cashin makes it well.
In contrast with the spate of books that address racial segregation with only a dispassionate academic focus on statistics and data, Cashin fills her book with personal stories from the Black Americans who have effectively fought the residential caste system. This book covers territory that will be familiar to readers of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste and Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, to which Cashin adds potential solutions rooted in respect and humanity ... Cashin’s study of the racial foundations of residential castes is an accessible and compelling read that balances historical documents with personal narratives. Highly recommended.
A new urban studies text offers a thorough, well-researched history of inner-city blight as the inevitable legacy of segregation and racism ... While extensively documented and amply footnoted, Cashin's survey remains compelling and accessible to a general readership. She clearly presents the effects of concentrated poverty on a populace ... A resonant, important argument that White supremacy and racial division poison life in our cities.
Cashin’s levelheaded reform suggestions draw from real-world success stories ... This is a well-researched and persuasive guide to a major source of inequity in the U.S.
