America in black and white
Stephan Thernstrom, Abigail M. ThernstromOverview
The "American Dilemma," Gunnar Myrdal called the problem of race in his classic 1944 book. More than half a century later, race remains the issue that dwarfs all others - the problem that doesn't get solved and won't go away. But in the decades since Myrdal wrote, much has changed, say the authors of America in Black and White. Progress - too little acknowledged - has been heartening. Pessimists talk of the "permanence of racism," and say that things are as bad as ever. In fact, the authors show, the status of blacks has been transformed in recent decades, and there is no going back. Problems remain, of course. But they will not be solved by traditional civil rights strategies, the authors argue. Affirmative action programs, for instance, do nothing to help the black underclass. Racial preferences cannot rescue the high school dropout who is too unskilled for the modern world of work. Racial progress ultimately depends on our common understanding that we are one nation, indivisible - that we sink or swim together, that black poverty impoverishes us all, and that black alienation eats at the nation's soul.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
This weighty book, contextualizing some complex racial history and limning current controversial issues, serves as a good backdrop to future arguments about race. After discussing history (e.g., the Jim Crow laws, Northern segregation), the authors emphasize that national economic expansion in the 1940s and 1950sbefore the civil rights erahelped blacks rise economically. They offer a nuanced take on the difficulty of neighborhood integration, and their analyses of black single motherhood and crime challenge conventional liberal explanations. The meat of the book is a careful attack on race-based policies; even blacks now oppose school busing and Afrocentrism. Although the authors emphasize the rise of the black middle class, they acknowledge that black wealth lags behind that of whites. However, they don't stress how public policy has shaped this developmentwhich diminishes their argument for U.S. color-blind policies. Though the Thernstroms note usefully that black leaders tend to be more negative about American progress than ordinary citizens, their one chapter on public attitudes cannot fully explore why our nation has not moved further toward becoming "indivisible." Stephan Thernstrom is the editor of The Harvard Encyclopedia of Ethnic Groups; Abigail Thernstrom wrote Whose Votes Count: Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights. (Sept.)Library Journal
This is a solid, sweeping account (from a Harvard scholar and a race relations specialist) of race relations in the United States over the last 50-some years, from the days of Jim Crow, through sit-ins, the African American migration from the rural South to the urban North, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act, the affirmative action era, the racially perceptual influence of an "appallingly high" urban black crime level, and the steady growth of a suburban black middle class. The authors assess judicial, educational, political, and social influences on what, despite real continuing problems, has been progress in easing race-related inequities. They see preferential policies as giving credence to the separateness of minorities. On balance, they are optimistic, as long as opportunity is provided for everyone in one nation. Of great breadth and depth, this work is highly recommended for academic and public readership.Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology at AlfredBooknews
Argues that the prevailing pessimism on the status of African- Americans and the state of race relations is not justified by the facts, which show that the lives of most African-Americans have improved over the past five decades, and advocates doing away with affirmative action and similar policies. Analyzes historical developments in race relations that climaxed in the 1960s, contending that substantial progress was made before the civil rights movement, and discusses recent statistics on poverty, education, crime, and jobs. For general readers. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.Kirkus Reviews
A vast historical and sociological survey of the past 50 years of race relations, recalling Gunnar Myrdal's 1944 landmark, An American Dilemma.Judging from the mass of social science data here, the authors (he's a Bancroft Prizewinning scholar at Harvard, she's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute) seem never to have met a table they didn't like. The Thernstroms' reliance on statistics will strike some as a little too credulous at times (e.g., they too readily dismiss the possibility that many whites tell pollsters only what they believe to be socially acceptable). But in a debate long on pat answers and resentful rhetoric, they introduce often absent elements of thoroughness and dispassion. Countering the famously pessimistic conclusion of the 1968 Kerner Commission report that America is evolving into two societies, black and white, the authors convincingly point out that segregation by law is no longer in force, that white hostility has sharply abated, and that remaining inequalities mostly result from gaps in educational attainment, the rise in fatherless black families, and black crime. The first third of the book, recounting the history of segregation up to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, challenges the widespread notion that black economic progress did not begin until preferential race-conscious policies were implemented in the 1960s, pointing out that greater advances in the prior two decades helped make the civil-rights movement possible. Part II details black progress in the professions, residential integration, and politics, noting dismaying gaps between the races in crime rates and graduation rates. Part III examines the current climate of racial grievance. The Thernstroms conclude by calling for an end to policies and procedures such as affirmative action and the "race norming" of test scores, which they believe only polarize the races.
Likely to be seen as the benchmark scholarly study of America's current anguish over the race question.