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newtimbuktu 's review for:
Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism
by Toure Reed
The strongest point of the book is his critique of Coats and Obama. The weakest is chapter one, his histography of Black people benefiting from the New Deal and interracial coalition. The author confuses what is often abstract academic liberal/intersectional performative analysis on race as "black nationalism". The author also false to see the long history of independent Black institutions pressuring both government and unions/labor left as a necessary precondition for the interracial coalitions the author promotes. Many scholars such as Harold Cruse would fundamentally contest his historical analysis around the NAACP and notions that Black radicalism was catalyzed by New Deal/labor organizing. Also, the author ignores long history of Black radical mobilizations outside the labor left (Michael Dawson). A solid attempt to critique neoliberalism's co-options of race as an issue to deploy against radical notions of redistribution which unfortunately falls to often into painting the broad diverse Black radical struggle as capitulating to capitalism vision of freedom and the ideological vision of Daniel Patrick Moynahan.