Freedom Dreams

Contemporary African-American scholars across the humanities and social sciences share a preoccupation with posing big questions about the dilemmas of black life in the United States. Under the historic presidency of Barack Obama, the relevance of tackling African-American thought and action in the post–civil rights period has only grown. One of the leading voices among a cohort of black political scientists considering these themes has been Michael C. Dawson, whose new book, Blacks In and Out of the Left, takes on the question of strategy for contemporary left black politics. Dawson has long been concerned with the potential for solidarity within a black American population increasingly diverse in class and culture. In Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics, which appeared in 1994, he explored how African Americans retained a strong sense of group identificationdespite becoming more economically differentiated.