"Winner of the Ralph J. Bunche Award, American Political Science Association" "One of Times Higher Education's Best Books of 2018" Michael G. Hanchard is a professor in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Party/Politics and Orpheus and Power.
How racism and discrimination have been central to democracies from the classical period to today
As right-wing nationalism and authoritarian populism gain momentum across the world, liberals, and even some conservatives, worry that democratic principles are under threat. In The Spectre of Race, Michael Hanchard argues that the current rise in xenophobia and racist rhetoric is nothing new and that exclusionary policies have always been central to democratic practices since their beginnings in classical times. Contending that democracy has never been for all people, Hanchard discusses how marginalization is reinforced in modern politics, and why these contradictions need to be fully examined if the dynamics of democracy are to be truly understood.
Hanchard identifies continuities of discriminatory citizenship from classical Athens to the present and looks at how democratic institutions have promoted undemocratic ideas and practices. The longest-standing modern democracies--France, Britain, and the United States-profited from slave labor, empire, and colonialism, much like their Athenian predecessor. Hanchard follows these patterns through the Enlightenment and to the states and political thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and he examines how early political scientists, including Woodrow Wilson and his contemporaries, devised what Hanchard has characterized as "racial regimes" to maintain the political and economic privileges of dominant groups at the expense of subordinated ones. Exploring how democracies reconcile political inequality and equality, Hanchard debates the thorny question of the conditions under which democracies have created and maintained barriers to political membership.
Showing the ways that race, gender, nationality, and other criteria have determined a person's status in political life, The Spectre ofRace offers important historical context for how democracy generates political difference and inequality. "Lucidly written." "[Hanchard] widens the lens both chronologically (beginning with ancient Greece) and thematically (seeing racism as a subset of discrimination). Hanchard promises to get to the bottom of a paradox of modern democracies, in which the ideology of equality goes head to head with politically dominant groups that have always tried to exclude others."---David S. Katz, Times Higher Education "No one has contributed more to our comparative understanding of race and racial politics than Michael Hanchard, and The Spectre of Race may be his most ambitious book yet. In it, he advances the provocative claim that racism and discrimination are foundational to Western democracy. Anyone interested in comparative politics or democratic theory will want to read this book."-Doug McAdam, coauthor of Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America "Delving into neglected archives, Michael Hanchard offers a novel history of comparative politics, showing how it has been haunted since its inception by the 'spectre of race', tracing back its origins to the ethnic conception of democracy in ancient Athens, and following its development in contemporary France, Britain, and the United States. A remarkable tour de force."-Didier Fassin, Institute for Advanced Study "Western liberal democracy prides itself on its genealogical connection to the Athenian polis and the glories of classical civilization. But there is a far less savory aspect to this connection that has not received due attention until now. In this impressively paradigm-shifting work in comparative politics, Michael Hanchard demonstrates how democracy-from the Athenian city-state to Britain, France, a
