| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Alessandra Lorini. Rituals of Race: American Public Culture and the Search for Racial Democracy. (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series in Black Studies.) Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 1999. Pp. xix, 305. Cloth $60.00, paper $19.50.

In this seven-chapter book, Alessandra Lorini presents the story of political interracial alliance in public events from Reconstruction to World War I (p. xiii). The term "public culture," as suggested by the subtitle, should not be mistaken for "political culture" or the Habermasian "public sphere"; rather, it represents "a contested space in which collective or subjective identities fight for recognition" (p. xii). For Lorini, participation in public events offers those individuals or groups that are excluded from the formal institutional process the opportunity to demonstrate "rituals of empowerment": an individually or collectively expressed symbolic behavior that challenges the existing power structure and demand for the recognition of their own values. Following this rationale, Lorini argues that the active participation by African Americans in the public events during this period, together with the very existence of black-white interracial alliances and conflicting views and strategies as spawned by the participation, formed "the living forces expanding boundaries of democratic inclusion" (p. xiv). . . .

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