Description
Book Synopsis
Uncovers a racial gap in the way the American government appears in people’s lives. The book makes it clear that public policy changes over the last fifty years have driven all Americans to distrust the government that they see in their lives, even though Americans of different races are not seeing the same kind of government.
Trade Review
“The State You See offers a welcome and timely addition to the growing literature on public policy and political inequality. Rosenthal’s consideration of the racialized feedback effects of multiple policy experiences fills a critical lacuna in our collective understanding of the politics of public policy.”—Mallory E. SoRelle, Duke University
“In The State You See (TSYS) Rosenthal argues that policy in the post-civil rights era has developed such that it is unequally visible to White and Black Americans, and this inequality in turn leads to different responses to declining trust in public institutions. Rosenthal’s book takes up the important task of integrating well known but disparate findings around criminal justice system, public welfare provision, and racial and ethnic politics into a unified theory of racialized policy feedbacks. The State You See represents a major step forward in the study of political learning, and the capacity for the state to shape citizens’ attitudes and behaviors.”—Hannah Walker, University of Texas at Austin
Table of Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1. Introduction: The Submerged State and the Carceral State
- Chapter 2. Taxes and Welfare: The Tip of the Iceberg in White America
- Chapter 3. Police as the Face of Government: State Visibility Among People of Color
- Chapter 4. Visible in All the Wrong Places: Dual Visibility and American Political Distrust
- Chapter 5. Invisibility and Membership: How Government Visibility Creates Racially Patterned Political Inequality
- Chapter 6. Black Lives Matter: Disrupting the Duality
- Chapter 7. The Politics of Visibility and Prospects for Change
- Appendix A: Interview Protocol and Post-Interview Survey
- Appendix B: Ethnographic Research Details
- Appendix C: Interview Information
- Appendix D: Dataset Information and Question Wording
- Notes
- References
- Index
