Sharon A. Stanley is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Memphis.

"In this book, Sharon Stanley develops a rich conception of integration that takes account of familiar criticisms. She reveals the complexity of integration, and she does not shy away from the implication that it will be very difficult to achieve. But in the end, Stanley's account persuasively argues that it remains an ideal worth pursuing." --Andrew Valls, Oregon State University

"Although activists and scholars have been debating the merits of integration for decades, Sharon Stanley's book offers a strikingly original response. By pressing a case for integration that reckons with the psychic, political, and material effects of white supremacy, Stanley challenges both liberal and conservative approaches to Americans' racial divisions. Her argument is sobering and inspiring." --Lawrie Balfour, author of Democracy's Reconstruction: Thinking Politically with W. E. B. Du Bois

"Sharon Stanley's An Impossibe Dream? Racial Integration in the United States is a significant contribution to the re-energized debate over the idea of integration, its implementation in public policy, and its role in social and political philosophy. This is an ambitious critical account of integration, which will invigorate a debate that a divided America must have if it is to develop a coherent sense of itself as a just nation." --Ronald R. Sundstrom, author of The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice

"An Impossible Dream? is thoroughly researched and exceptionally clear. Especially impressive is its specification of a white obligation to shoulder the burden of integration and relinquish racial advantage. Stanley powerfully unpacks what white relinquishment means." --Jack Turner, author of Awakening to Race

"An Impossible Dream is a well-written book that provides the most thorough examination of racial integration that this reviewer has ever read. The book would be a great addition to classes on racial/ethnic politics, US political thought, and courses exploring the Civil Rights Movement. Highly recommended." --CHOICE

"Stanley argues that while real integration would surely involve 'mutual transformation' among black and white Americans, the obligation for black Americans to pursue integration is dependent upon white Americans acknowledging and relinquishing their white privilege, and that obligation on the part of white Americans is not similarly dependent. ELThis moral asymmetry is the theoretical backbone of the book, and demands the attention of not only political theorists, but ethical theorists as well, who often neglect the situational and political contexts that shape moral obligation." --Contemporary Political Theory

Sharon A. Stanley's book An Impossible Dream? Racial Integration in the United States is an exceptional intervention to a dynamic field of scholarship.... [It] thoughtfully puts into question liberal and conservative approaches to integration and redirects the debate in ways that reverse expectations regarding the connection between justice and integration. ...The book deftly engages the scholarly literature on integration alongside radical critiques of the same by the black power movement in order to put forward a complex, radical, and realistic model of integration." - Ines Valdez, Political Theory