Review: Race and the Politics of Deception: The Making of an American City, by Christopher Mele

Race and the Politics of Deception illustrates how persistent inequality and segregation in cities can be the result of purposeful strategy and decisions motivated by profit. Key to the book is the “strategic use of race,” which Christopher Mele describes as racial rhetoric and manipulation that functions to support some forms of social change over others (10). Through an historical lens on Chester, Pennsylvania, Mele connects familiar themes of economic development, school segregation, spatial ordering of industry, and housing with racial strategies and politics. Today, Chester is a city experiencing twenty-first-century development through pro-growth, color-blind race ideologies. The consequent imbalance in investment and racial disparities found within the city make it an example of how strategic use of race affected the development of a rust belt city over time, affecting not only its decline but also...