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Title: AMERICA IN BLACK AND WHITE: One Nation, Indivisible by Stephan Thernstrom ISBN: 0-684-84497-4 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 02 February, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.68 (25 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Slightly to the right of center look at race relations
Comment: Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom's "America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible" charts a different course from many of the scholarly books written about racial relations in the United States today. The authors agree that the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s was a resounding success, opening many doors to African-Americans as a result of the systematic dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the South. This book is necessary, claim the authors, because the ideas that originally drove the civil rights movement have since drifted into dangerous terrain. According to this book, Martin Luther King's message of one nation where all people will be judged by their individual merits and not skin color has become a land where blacks and whites are once again moving into separate camps based on race. The introduction of affirmative action programs and other racial social policies does not solve divisive problems but instead creates new racial barriers. Moreover, media and civil rights proponents today discuss black problems as though that segment of the population has made little progress. The authors insist that there are still nagging difficulties to overcome, but that a "lack of analytic rigor" leads to false perceptions about how far blacks have actually risen in society. Therefore, the authors rely heavily on statistical tables, charts, and polls to prove their arguments.
The first section of "America in Black and White" outlines the history of the odious conditions blacks faced in the American South and the resulting rise of the civil rights movement. The Thernstroms describe southern society in all of its squalor: the crushing poverty faced by both whites and blacks, the lackluster drive towards industrialization that kept many members of the population toiling in fields and small towns, pathetic levels of state spending on education for blacks, and the biases of the criminal justice system. Relying heavily on Gunnar Myrdal's groundbreaking study of race in America, the authors correctly detail the host of social structures aligned against the African-American population. For example, blacks rarely received decent treatment in the legal system because police departments run by whites often failed to protect the black citizenry from criminals. Moreover, the legal system in the South considered crimes committed against blacks secondary to outrages perpetrated against white members of society. Subsequent sections of the book take an in depth look at black progress in various social arenas from the 1970s onward, arenas such as education, politics, law, crime, and many others.
The absence of job opportunities, poor education, lack of protections in the courts, and segregation policies in the South led African-Americans to increasingly move north. The first migration came during World War I. A second, even larger migration occurred in the 1940s and 1950s. Blacks in the North did not have to deal with segregation, but did experience racism in housing and certain sectors of the job market. Better conditions in the northern states led to an increasing drive for an end to Jim Crow in the South. The authors argue that federal legislation destroying segregation in the 1960s also contained the seeds of future divisions. The Thernstroms see a sinister change of direction with the release of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's report on the black family in 1965. Moynihan's remedy for the problems faced by black citizens, echoed by Lyndon Johnson in a speech at Howard University the same year, moved beyond providing for equal opportunity to call for "equal results" as well. This argument indirectly endorsed the idea of affirmative action and social entitlement programs based specifically on race. For the authors, the problems inherent in this approach are clear: to formulate policy giving special treatment to one race is just as racist as passing laws subjugating specific races.
Perhaps the most interesting section of "America in Black and White," and probably the most controversial, concerns the authors' claims that African-American social advancement was greatest immediately before the rise of the civil rights movement. During the 1940s and 1950s, the authors write, blacks surged forward in nearly all areas of American society. This growth was far from perfect, but in the arenas of education, economics, politics, and sports blacks saw remarkable gains. Almost half of the African-Americans who lived in poverty moved out of that classification during this period. Education levels for blacks, while lagging behind whites, still grew significantly compared to earlier eras in American history. This period also saw the integration of professional baseball and basketball, opening up an entirely new aspect of society to black advancement. African-Americans showed signs of vigor at the polls, as a court case outlawing white southern primaries and greater movement to the North allowed more blacks to vote than ever before. Obviously, there were still many problems to overcome: black wages still lagged behind white levels, education was still a problem, and the South still practiced vigorous discrimination against its black population. But African-Americans did make progress, and this chapter effectively illustrates that modern day claims about the complete lack of black improvement before the civil rights movements of the 1960s are patently false.
The greatest problem with this analysis of black gains during the 1940s and 1950s is that it undercuts the need and influence of activism as a force for change. If African-Americans were achieving so much, why did the civil rights movement appear on the scene? It may well be a case of a segment of the population finding some success and quickly wanting more, thereby accelerating the growth and scope of that change. But the Thernstroms spend more time discussing the overarching factors-political, economic, and social-that contributed to two decades of growth instead of focusing on what everyday people were doing on a local level to bring about advancement. Following this argument to its logical conclusion makes a reader suspect that twenty years of gradual progress would have toppled Jim Crow laws without the assistance of any sort of social activism.
Rating: 3
Summary: A very important book for the always hot topic of race.
Comment: I was impressed by the honesty of this book. The use of vast statistical data was both helpful and annoying. The authors did not question the sometimes obvious shortcomings of self-reports on racial attitudes. Though Abigail and Stephan rightly pointed out the negative implications of crime in the black community and unwed mothers, their "solution" seemed so insensitive and rather optimistic. However, I was very disturbed by the authors failure to note how public policies can have both salutary and adverse effects. To argue that black economic progress took place prior to affirmative action programs does not clear govt and society of its responsibility for having created conditions of black poverty. The Thernstroms are so adamant about their belief in limited govt that they hardly see any public policies that have helped blacks in the last 30 years. Furthermore, the title is mistaken. The contents of the book undermine the notion of a unified and inseparable nation. In fact, the Thernstroms are simply mistaken in their belief in America's (i.e., the American people) will to deal with its most enduring sin--race. But I do commend them for being candid enough to air our dirty laundry. We are in desperate need of solutions!
Rating: 5
Summary: The moralists of the Right
Comment: This book renders a thoughtful and persuasive treatment of the facts of racial divisions in the United States. The problems encountered by the Thernstroms in propounding on this subject can be summed up in what one anti-reveiwer on this page has written in order to smear another reveiwer with whose opinion he apparently disagrees. To wit, the anti-reveiwer does nothing more than cite a case brought by the CFTC against the son of the targeted reveiwer whom he's attempting to marginalize, much as those who don't agree with the Thernstroms' attempt to marginalize them; and with the same type of faulty facts and sloppy research, just as in the instant case I cite.
It's unfortunate that the debate of such momentous and substantive issues, such as the racial problems addressed by the Thernstroms, cannot take place in more temperate tones. It would also be more helpful if reveiwers would focus on and respond to the facts presented in this book, on the merits, rather than opposing them because they affront the complainants belief system.
This book reflects some sobering and instructive work. Let's hope the more emotionally balanced among us can use it to further the goal of racial harmony rather than to continue being divisive.
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Title: Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority by John H. McWhorter ISBN: 1592400019 Publisher: Gotham Books Pub. Date: 27 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America by Abigail M. Thernstrom, Stephan Thernstrom ISBN: 0817998721 Publisher: Hoover Institution Press Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Content of Our Character : A New Vision of Race In America by Shelby Steele ISBN: 006097415X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 September, 1991 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass by Douglas S. Massey, Nancy A. Denton ISBN: 0674018214 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: July, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.50 |
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Title: Diversity: The Invention of A Concept by Peter Wood ISBN: 1893554627 Publisher: Encounter Books Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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