The Ordeal Of Integration: Progress And Resentment In America's "Racial" Crisis [Paperback]

Orlando Patterson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 1998 | Series: Ordeal of Integration (Book 1)

For many years Orlando Patterson has been a major contributor to the public discussion of race in America. In this eagerly anticipated new volume, the author of the National Book Award–winner Freedom in the Making of Western Culture presents a comprehensive exploration of contemporary interethnic relations.Americans are in the midst of a rejuvenated conversation about race. How we talk about race—or fail to—is one of the central themes of this book, which is certain to spark lively debate among intellectuals and policy advocates.Unflinching in his analysis, Patterson chides professional race advocates, the mainstream media, and his fellow academics for homogenizing the 33 million Americans of African ancestry into a single group beset by crises and intractable dilemmas. His willingness to challenge the received wisdom of conservatives, liberals, and genetic determinists alike affords us the opportunity to critically examine our own preconceived notions and prejudices.An experienced policy advisor, Patterson brings to the national discussion a lifetime of study of slavery, freedom, and ethnic inequality worldwide. His practical recommendations emphasize solutions to problems too often described as unsolvable. For the one-fourth of the Afro-American population at the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder, his suggestions include housing vouchers, limiting the influx of low-skilled immigrants, and instituting a highly original policy to reduce teenage childbearing. He remains firmly committed to school desegregation, supports intermarriage as a means of promoting full integration, and takes American religious leaders to task for the ”scandal of segregation” within their churches. Responding to widespread antagonism toward affirmative action, Patterson advocates retaining it for another fifteen years, eventually replacing it with a class-based policy.Standing as a challenge to those who insist on dwelling on the failures of race relations, The Ordeal of Integration admonishes Americans to stop exaggerating the intractability of persistent ethnic problems and start focusing on what works.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A professor at Harvard, Orlando Patterson has been called a radical by conservatives and a conservative by radicals. His tendency, he notes in his introduction, is "not to care where my ideas originated--as long as they strike me as sound--or where the chips fall as a result of what I write or say." The Ordeal of Integration is what Patterson calls a work of economic sociology. He looks at the "remarkable facts of" black progress, refuting the notion that black America is in dire crisis. He then considers how liberals, conservatives, and those who espouse the "hereditarian or genetic" view discuss race in the United States. Throughout, Patterson calls for a return to common sense in discussions of race. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Patterson (sociology, Harvard), the author of the prize-winning Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (LJ 7/91), draws on current social science research to investigate the "paradoxes" of race relations in the United States. One is that black living standards are generally rising even as the news media uniformly depicts blacks as poor inner-city residents. Another is that race relations are said to be worsening at a time when increasing numbers of respondents tell pollsters that they have friends and co-workers from other races. Yes, some blacks are part of an "underclass," says Patterson, and a sizable minority of whites remain steeped in racist thought. But it is "irresponsible to overplay" the grim news. "An unholy alliance of conservative, law-and-order hard-liners, sensationalist media producers, and Afro-American race leaders all have vested interests in exaggerating the degree to which the underclass has infected both the broader Afro-American population and the nation at large." Critical of both the mainstream Civil Rights movement and the conservative counter-establishment, Patterson adopts a maverick position that combines support for affirmative action and an activist government with a rejection of various forms of nationalism or democratic socialism. Recommended for larger libraries.?Kent Worcester, Marymount Manhattan Coll., New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Basic Civitas Books; 1st Paperback Edition 1998 edition (October 14, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 188717897X
• ISBN-13: 978-1887178976
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #906,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Common-sense moderate view of race relations in America, August 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America's "Racial" Crisis (Hardcover)

Professor Patterson writes eloquently and thoughtfully on the changes made in race relations in the US. He also presents a well-reasoned summary of some of the reasons for the inte-racial friction still remaining in America, as well as a potential template for further change. Patterson is more of a moderate than most writers on this topic; and he also very succintly illustrates why and how each end of the American political spectrum has an interest in maintaining the tone of racial dialogue at its current fever pitch.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Ordeal of Integration, August 18, 2004

By 

Mark Levine "leevyne" (Jersey City, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Ordeal Of Integration: Progress And Resentment In America's "Racial" Crisis (Paperback)

Previous readers and reviewers seem stuck on the idea of Patterson's liberalism or conservatism or "the side he has taken". This book, as all of Patterson's, is fact-driven, and his genius comes in analyzing what might otherwise appear to be discrepancies between statistical findings. Thus, he may occasionally be speculative, but in my opinion creatively rather than opinionatedly.

Sometimes the statistics alone are remarkable. One that has stayed in my mind---because it explains so much--- since my first reading of this book when it was published is that both Black and White Americans (or, as Patterson prefers, Euro-Americans and Afro-Americans), when asked what percentage of the American population is Afro-American, overestimate the real figure (something like 13%) by about a multiple of 3 (30-40%).

But Patterson's analysis, and probing additional questions, contextualize raw numbers such as these and make sense not only out of the numbers but, when one reads more, of the entirety (!) of American racial matters. He is a historian as well as a sociologist/economist (he is also something of a philosopher), and writes better than most sociologists, even if not up to the level of the great American historians (Bailyn, Woodward, etc.). It is in this area--- and only in this area--- that I would rate this book anything less than five stars. A brilliant and enlightening book!

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A departure from entrenched positions, July 8, 2000

By 

Olumide Ogunremi - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ordeal Of Integration: Progress And Resentment In America's "Racial" Crisis (Paperback)

Orlando Patterson in a seemingly departure from entrenched positions on both sides of the debate on African American issues chooses a mid ground.It is a collection of essays the first entitled PARADOXES OF INTEGRATION is in my view the best.It has a number of illustrative charts.It states the fact that African Americans indeed have a bipolar distribution with an expanding middle class but also a lower class who have not benefitted much in terms of income since the 60's.He does not throw punches when he talks about problems of drugs,teenage pregnancy,lack of skills that has been also discribed by Julius Wilson as the dissapearance of jobs.He also talks about housing patterns.Other chapters deal with the moral and intellectual crisis of Liberal African American advocay and also conservatives.In these essays he refers to philosophers like Kant,Epictecus.He is critical of both groups.He also debunks the Bell curve and talks about Affirmative action which he believes should continue for now but phased out gradually.My grouses with the book are his solutions in the conclusion do not seem far reaching enough.He also prefers using the term Afro Americans and Euro Americans.The truth is no matter what explanation you provide for the nomenclature you choose the problems remain the same.Also he talks about interracial marrying and census but this is not the main thrust of the book in any way.It is indeed a welcome addition to my growing library.