A Colony in a Nation

Hayes (Twilight of the Elites), host of MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, has written a laser-focused, necessary book about U.S. race relations, primarily the black experience, and law and order as they are experienced across the country. Hayes’s main assertion is that the criminal justice system creates two separate Americas with borders drawn along racial lines—the “nation,” or white America, with methods of policing characteristic of a democracy that respects the basic rights of its citizenry, and the “colony,” black America, which is policed like an occupied state, trampling on the civil liberties of its inhabitants. Hayes’s book has a strong through-line comparing the concepts of law and order. Law is defined in the commonly understood sense, while order is explained as a tool used by the state, through the police, to maintain the status quo. The author also ties in the related problem of our status as the most incarcerated nation in the world and why this punitive system is ineffective. This is an important, persuasive book that, if read, can help Americans begin to heal the divide between these two nations. (Mar.)