The Overseer Class: A Manifesto

From the author of the critically acclaimed The Viral Underclass — named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2022 — comes The Overseer Class, a provocative examination of what happens when members of historically minoritized groups are elevated into highly visible positions of power within existing institutions under the terms of a kind of Faustian bargain.

Our society places enormous attention on those who become the first or only person of their identifying group to enter elite spaces. But in celebrating representation, we often overlook the compromises demanded by those institutions. The Overseer Class explores the sacrifices made by a small yet influential group of people from minoritized communities as they enter segregated institutions in positions of public authority and visibility.

Members of the overseer class wield tremendous institutional — even necropolitical — power over who lives and who dies. Yet that power often depends upon repressing, disciplining, or distancing themselves from people who look like them, speak like them, love like them, or come from the same places they do.

The book opens with a striking 1967 observation from James Baldwin:

“The poor, of whatever color, do not trust the law and certainly have no reason to, and God knows we didn’t. ‘If you must call a cop,’ we said in those days, ‘for God’s sake, make sure it’s a white one.’ We did not feel that the cops were protecting us, for we knew too much about the reasons for the kinds of crimes committed in the ghetto; but we feared black cops even more than white cops, because the black cop had to work so much harder — on your head — to prove to himself and his colleagues that he was not like all the other n******.”

But this dynamic does not exist only within law enforcement. It appears across many spheres of American life, and The Overseer Class examines how it operates within mass media, universities, corporate America, the military, and government.

The Overseer Class aims not only to educate readers and spark critical discussion, but also to provide a framework for recognizing and challenging these institutional dynamics. It is a weighty and urgent subject, one that Dr. Thrasher is uniquely equipped to examine with depth, clarity, and insight.