Seeing through Race is a boldly original reinterpretation of the iconic photographs of the black civil rights struggle Martin A Berger's provocative & groundbreaking study shows how the very pictures credited with arousing white sympathy & thereby paving the way for civil rights legislation actually limited the scope of racial reform in the 1960s Berger analyzes many of these famous images
- dogs & fire hoses turned against peaceful black marchers in Birmingham tear gas & clubs wielded against voting-rights marchers in Selma
- & argues that because white sympathy was dependent on photographs of powerless blacks these unforgettable pictures undermined efforts to enact
- or even imagine
- reforms that threatened to upend the racial balance of power