Democracy Is Awkward

224 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, appends., notes, bibl., index

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-8563-2
Published: February 2025
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-8562-5
Published: February 2025

Paperback Available February 2025, but pre-order your copy today!

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In uncertain times, confronting pressing problems such as racial oppression and the environmental crisis requires everyday people to come together and wield political power for the greater good. Yet, as Michael Rosino shows, progressive political organizations in the United States have frequently failed to achieve social change. Why? Rosino posits that it is because of the unwillingness of white progressives at the grassroots level to share power with progressives of color.

Using rich ethnographic data, Rosino focuses on participants in a real grassroots progressive political party in the northeastern United States. While the organization's goals included racial equity and the inclusion of people of color, its membership and leadership remained disproportionately white, and the group had mixed success in prioritizing and carrying out its racial justice agenda. By highlighting the connections between racial inequality, grassroots democracy, and political participation, Rosino weaves in the voices and experiences of party members and offers insights for building more robust and empowering spaces of grassroots democratic engagement.

About the Author

Michael Rosino is assistant professor of sociology at Molloy College.
For more information about Michael Rosino, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"Perfect for scholars, students, and organizers, Democracy Is Awkward is a genuine contribution to the field. With rich, engaging data, Rosino shows how organizations committed to social justice must themselves contend with the inequalities they aim to challenge in the world. His findings counter assumptions about antiracism as harmonious, instead showing that actual multiracial democracy is uncomfortable and messy or, in his words, 'awkward.'"—Sarah Mayorga, Brandeis University

"Rosino captures a very important issue about how grassroots social movements can facilitate and reproduce white logics and practices that ultimately facilitate white supremacy, even while they strive to dismantle it. In his book, Michael Rosino makes an important and timely contribution to both the literature on race and inequality and the literature on social activism and social movements."—Wendy Leo Moore, Texas A&M University