Michele Moody-Adams is Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University.īrent Edwards is Peng Family Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia. His previous books include Black France, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light, and Transnational France: The Modern History of a Universal Nation. He is a historian whose work primarily focuses on the history of modern and twentieth century France. Tyler Stovall is the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University. Throughout the history of modern Western liberal democracy, freedom has long been white freedom.

Taking readers from the Age of Revolution to today, Stovall challenges the notion that racism is somehow a paradox or contradiction within the democratic tradition, demonstrating how white identity is intrinsic to Western ideas about liberty. He discusses how the Statue of Liberty-a gift from France to the United States and perhaps the most famous symbol of freedom on Earth-promised both freedom and whiteness to European immigrants. He explores how French and American thinkers defined freedom in racial terms and conceived of liberty as an aspect and privilege of whiteness. Tyler Stovall explores the intertwined histories of racism and freedom in France and the United States, the two leading nations that have claimed liberty as the heart of their national identities. White Freedom (Princeton University Press, 2020) traces the complex relationship between freedom and race from the eighteenth century to today, revealing how being free has meant being white. America, a nation founded on the principle of liberty, is also a nation built on African slavery, Native American genocide, and systematic racial discrimination. The era of the Enlightenment, which gave rise to our modern conceptions of freedom and democracy, was also the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Tyler Stovall, with Michele Moody-Adams, Brent Edwards, and Madeleine Dobie White Freedom: the Racial History of an Idea

Tyler stovall paris noir