The Overseer Class // A Manifesto

The author of the critically acclaimedThe Viral Underclass(one of Kirkus Reviews best books of 2022)is back withThe Overseer Class,which explores what happens when members of historically minoritized groups are selected for high-visibility positions of power within existing institutionsbut under the conditions of a kind of Faustian bargain.

Our society places so much weight and attention on those who become the first or only of their identifying group that we miss one of the inherent issues in that model. This book is about the kinds of compromises made by a small but influential group of people from minoritized groups in the United States as they have entered segregated institutions in highly visible positions. People in the overseer class wield enormous institutional power, even necropolitical power over who lives and who dies; its just that their power is predicated upon repressing other people who look (or speak/have sex/come from places) like them.

The most obvious contemporary overseer is the Black police officer.The Overseer Classbegins with this quote from James Baldwin from 1967:

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 only exist within law enforcement, it exists in many different spheres andThe Overseer Classexplores what it looks like in mass media, universities, corporate America, the military, and government.The Overseer Classaims not only to educate us and start this discussion but to provide a framework for challenging that dynamic. It is a weighty topic but one that Dr. Thrasher is well-equipped to handle.

Steven W. Thrasher, PhD is the author of the award-winning bookThe Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide, which was aNew York Times’sPaperback Row Editors’ Pick, named one of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2022 byKirkus Reviews, was longlisted for both the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionLiterature, and won the 2023 POZ Award for Best in Literature. Heis also the inaugural Daniel Renberg Chair for Social Justice in Reporting at the Medill School of Journalism and a faculty member of Northwestern University’s Institute of Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing. An internationally renowned scholar on race, gender, and infectious disease, Dr. Thrasher’s writing has been published by theGuardian,Atlantic,New York Times, Scientific American, Literary Hub,and in many academic journals. is the author of the award-winning book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide, which was aNew York Times’sPaperback Row Editors’ Pick, named one of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2022 byKirkus Reviews, was longlisted for both the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionLiterature, and won the 2023 POZ Award for Best in Literature. Heis also the inaugural Daniel Renberg Chair for Social Justice in Reporting at the Medill School of Journalism and a faculty member of Northwestern University’s Institute of Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing. An internationally renowned scholar on race, gender, and infectious disease, Dr. Thrasher’s writing has been published by theGuardian,Atlantic,New York Times, Scientific American, Literary Hub,and in many academic journals.

• Publisher: Amistad
• Publish Date: May 19, 2026
• Pages: 240
• Language: English
• Type: Hardcover
• EAN/UPC: 9780063399419
• Dimensions: 9.0 X 6.0 X 0.0 inches | 1.14 pounds
• BISAC Categories: Politics, Society & Current Affairs, Psychology, Black Studies