Stephen Steinberg offers a bold challenge to prevailing thought on race and ethnicity in American society. In a penetrating critique of the famed race relations paradigm, he asks why a paradigm invented four decades before the Civil Rights Revolution still dominates both academic and popular discourses four decades after that revolution. On race, Steinberg argues that even the language of "race relations" obscures the structural basis of racial hierarchy and inequality. Generations of sociologists have unwittingly practiced a "white sociology" that reflects white interests and viewpoints. What happens, he asks, when we foreground the interests and viewpoints of the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of racial oppression? On ethnicity, Steinberg turns the tables and shows that the early sociologists who predicted ultimate assimilation have been vindicated by history. The evidence is overwhelming that the new immigrants, including Asians and most Latinos, are following in the footsteps of past immigrants—footsteps leading into the melting pot. But even today, there is the black exception. The end result is a dual melting pot—one for peoples of African descent and the other for everybody else. Race Relations: A Critique cuts through layers of academic jargon to reveal unsettling truths that call into question the nature and future of American nationality.

Charles N. Hunter, one of North Carolina's outstanding black reformers, was born a slave in Raleigh around 1851, and he lived there until his death in 1931. As public school teacher, journalist, and historian, Hunter devoted his long life to improving opportunities for blacks. A political activist, but never a radical, he skillfully used his journalistic abilities and his personal contacts with whites to publicize the problems and progress of his race. He urged blacks to ally themselves with the best of the white leaders, and he constantly reminded whites that their treatment of his race ran counter to their professed religious beliefs and the basic tenets of the American liberal tradition. By carefully balancing his efforts, Hunter helped to establish a spirit of passive protest against racial injustice. John Haley's compelling book, largely based on Hunter's voluminous papers, affords a unique opportunity to view race relations in North Carolina through the eyes of a black man. It also provides the first continuous survey of the black experience in the state from the end of the Civil War to the Great Depression, an account that critiques the belief that race relations were better in North Carolina than in other southern states.

The 1940s and 1950s were decades of far-reaching change and mobilization in the United States. White culture strove to make nonwhites invisible with segregation and discrimination as Southern blacks continued the Great Migration north and the government brought in Mexican labor via the Bracero Program to take up labor slack while U.S. troops were overseas. The rise of the civil rights movement and Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down segregation in schools 1954, were some results. This volume is THE content-rich source in a desirable decade-by-decade organization to help students and general readers understand the crucial race relations of the war years into the Cold War. Race Relations in the United States, 1940-1960 provides comprehensive reference coverage of the key events, influential voices, race relations by group, legislation, media influences, cultural output, and theories of inter-group interactions. The volume covers two decades with a standard format coverage per decade, including Timeline, Overview, Key Events, Voices of the Decade, Race Relations by Group, Law and Government, Media and Mass Communications, Cultural Scene, Influential Theories and Views of Race Relations, Resource Guide. This format allows comparison of topics through the decades. The bulk of the coverage is topical essays, written in a clear, encyclopedic style. Historical photos, a selected bibliography, and index complement the text.

A comparative study of slavery in Brazil and the United States, first published in 1971, looking at the demographic, economic, and cultural factors that allowed black people in Brazil to gain economically and retain their African culture, while the U.S. pursued a course of racial segregation.

This book is an essential resource for anyone who wants to understand race in America, drawing on research from a variety of fields to answer frequently asked questions regarding race relations, systemic racism, and racial inequality. This work is part of a series that uses evidence-based documentation to examine the veracity of claims and beliefs about high-profile issues in American culture and politics. This particular volume examines the true state of race relations and racial inequality in the United States, drawing on empirical research in the hard sciences and social sciences to answer frequently asked questions regarding race and inequality. The book refutes falsehoods, misunderstandings, and exaggerations surrounding these topics and confirms the validity of other assertions. Assembling this empirical research into one accessible place allows readers to better understand the scholarly evidence on such high-interest topics as white privilege, racial bias in criminal justice, media bias, housing segregation, educational inequality, disparities in employment, racial stereotypes, and personal attitudes about race and ethnicity in America. The authors draw from scholarly research in biology, genetics, medicine, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and economics (among many other fields) to answer these questions, and in doing so they provide readers with the information to enter any conversation about American race relations in the 21st century as informed citizens.

Publisher Description

The twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of the groundbreaking classic, with a new introduction First published in 1993, on the one-year anniversary of the Los Angeles riots, Race Matters became a national best seller that has gone on to sell more than half a million copies. This classic treatise on race contains Dr. West’s most incisive essays on the issues relevant to black Americans, including the crisis in leadership in the Black community, Black conservatism, Black-Jewish relations, myths about Black sexuality, and the legacy of Malcolm X. The insights Dr. West brings to these complex problems remain relevant, provocative, creative, and compassionate. In a new introduction for the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, Dr. West argues that we are in the midst of a spiritual blackout characterized by imperial decline, racial animosity, and unchecked brutality and terror as seen in Baltimore, Ferguson, and Charlottesville. Calling for a moral and spiritual awakening, Dr. West finds hope in the collective and visionary resistance exemplified by the Movement for Black Lives, Standing Rock, and the Black freedom tradition. Now more than ever, Race Matters is an essential book for all Americans, helping us to build a genuine multiracial democracy in the new millennium.