Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (George Gund Foundation Book in African American Studies) [Hardcover]

Michael K. Brown (Author), Martin Carnoy (Author), Elliott Currie (Author), Troy Duster (Author), David B. Oppenheimer (Author), Marjorie Shultz (Author), David Wellman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 18, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0520237064 | ISBN-13: 978-0520237063 | Edition: 1

White Americans, abetted by neo-conservative writers of all hues, generally believe that racial discrimination is a thing of the past and that any racial inequalities that undeniably persist--in wages, family income, access to housing or health care--can be attributed to African Americans' cultural and individual failures. If the experience of most black Americans says otherwise, an explanation has been sorely lacking--or obscured by the passions the issue provokes. At long last offering a cool, clear, and informed perspective on the subject, this book brings together a team of highly respected sociologists, political scientists, economists, criminologists, and legal scholars to scrutinize the logic and evidence behind the widely held belief in a color-blind society--and to provide an alternative explanation for continued racial inequality in the United States.
While not denying the economic advances of black Americans since the 1960s, Whitewashing Race draws on new and compelling research to demonstrate the persistence of racism and the effects of organized racial advantage across many institutions in American society--including the labor market, the welfare state, the criminal justice system, and schools and universities. Looking beyond the stalled debate over current antidiscrimination policies, the authors also put forth a fresh vision for achieving genuine racial equality of opportunity in a post-affirmative action world.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This powerful book disposes of the claim, so often heard, that America has solved its race problem and can now be 'color-blind.' Based on hard facts, it shows how we must work - for the sake of all of us - to give Black Americans the reality of equal opportunity." - Anthony Lewis, author of Gideon's Trumpet"

From the Inside Flap

"In Whitewashing Race, an impressive and diverse group of scholars launch an empirically grounded assault on the vast body of colorblind orthodoxy. The authors harness a medley of disciplinary perspectives into a cogent argument about racial stratification accompanied by a set of practical racial justice policy options. Their aim is both simple and ambitious: to reinvigorate a moribund debate by marshalling their collective intellectual resources to demonstrate that the conservative consensus on race is neither morally sustainable nor logically defensible."--Lani Guinier, coauthor of The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy

"This powerful book disposes of the claim, so often heard, that America has solved its race problem and can now be 'color-blind.' Based on hard facts, it shows how we must work--for the sake of all of us--to give Black Americans the reality of equal opportunity."--Anthony Lewis, author of Gideon's Trumpet

"An essential book. Americans have always worked hard at burying our racial truths, thereby leaving half-truths, myths and raw bigotry to continue their brutal work on our most vulnerable citizens. The authors cauterize these terrible wounds with prodigious research and brilliant insights. Their work is a great service to justice and to our country."--Roger Wilkins, author of Jefferson's Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism

"For many years conservative scholars and think tanks have been trying to convince the American public that racism is dead and that race-specific policies, such as affirmative action, cannot be justified and are in fact detrimental. To a great extent they have succeeded in making ostensible 'color-blindness' the dominant test of law and policy affecting racial minorities. Now at last we have the definitive response to this argument. It comes from seven distinguished scholars from a range of disciplines who believe that race must be taken into account if we are ever to get beyond racism. With massive evidence, much of it quantitative, they blast conservative color-blindness to smithereens, showing that it really functions as a formula to perpetuate racial inequality. No one concerned with racial justice in America can afford to ignore this book."--George M. Fredrickson, author of Racism: A Short History

"Whitewashing Race is the most important social science statement on race in more than a decade. It lays bare the expressly conservative, ideological, and deeply flawed analyses of those pundits pressing for 'color-blind' social policy. With lucid prose and truly definitive scholarship, Brown, Wellman, and colleagues thoroughly debunk the reigning conservative consensus. Anyone who cares about racial justice and the fate of the American Dream should read this vitally important book."--Lawrence D. Bobo, editor of Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in Los Angeles

"Far from writing a collection of essays, the authors of Whitewashing Race have collaborated to produce a brilliant, seamless book on America's deepest divide. Framed as a response to conservative analysts who claim that racial problems are essentially solved, the book provides an authoritative overview of how the nation's two principal races still remain sharply apart by every social measure."--Andrew Hacker, author of Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal

"In today's political climate, even the most well-meaning liberal tends to believe that institutional racism is a thing of the past and that we've truly achieved a color-blind society. Whitewashing Race makes a powerful case that racism is still with us. Relying on solid evidence rather than polemics, the authors have amassed an overwhelming body of data to show the persistence of racism in the job and housing market, education, the criminal justice system, and the political arena. If we ever have a real 'national conversation' on race, Whitewashing Race ought to be mandatory reading."--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 349 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (September 18, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520237064
• ISBN-13: 978-0520237063
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #914,930 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars grab your highlighter, October 6, 2003

By 

christopher (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (George Gund Foundation Book in African American Studies) (Hardcover)

For anyone interested in how the politics of race are presented in today's world (affirmative action, prison sentencing, etc.), this book is a definite must-read. The authors analyze the conservative's overly-simplistic view of race as being based simply on whether a person exhibits overt prejudice while ignoring the larger implications of accumulated wealth and advantages enjoyed by whites from years of legal discrimination.

The authors poke holes in much of the misinformation coming from the conservative side of the aisle, and reveal just how sinister and permeating racial bias still is in America. Grab this book, a good cup of coffee, a high-lighter, and become updated on the dynamics of race in 2003 America.

41 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 3.5 stars, against Stephen Thernstrom, January 2, 2004

By 

[e-mail] (Edmonton, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (George Gund Foundation Book in African American Studies) (Hardcover)

Should one send political scientists to do a historian's job? That is the question one has to ask about this book compiled by a consortium of political scientists, in response to the "racial realism" of today's right-centrist consensus. This consensus, argued by such authors as Jim Sleeper, Tamara Jacoby, John McWhorter, The New Republic and the renowned historians of American immigration Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom, argue that racism is not really a problem in American life. To the extent that African-Americans are disadvantaged it is because of their own failings or, somewhat more tactfully, the failings of the black politicians and the guilty liberals they (overwhelmingly) support.

This book argues that this fundamentally optimistic view is wrong. They are right to say so and their book is very detailed and comprehensive (the Thernstroms in particular are repeatedly criticized). Still the book is not perfect. The book makes an error in numbering its footnotes in chapter five. It also incorrectly says that until recently there were no African-Americans elected from North Carolina since Reconstruction (one in fact was elected in 1898). The style is not very engaging, it consists mostly of summaries of papers in economics, political science, sociology and the other social sciences. The result is a certain dryness and abstract quality that could use more historical analysis (the treatment of unions is somewhat superficial). The discussion of racism is not the most thoughtful available (and little is said about Latinos). Nevertheless one should not ignore its points. "Racial realists" argue that racism is not a problem because only a handful of people would support racist attitudes in opinion polls. There are several problems with this argument. Aside from the fact that people do not necessarily volunteer their support of unpopular ideas, it turns the concept of racism and racist harm into a question of pure malice. If there is none (or if it somehow "rational") there is no racism. One might ask why showing discrimination should require showing malice, when other torts merely require showing negligence? Also it is a non-sequitur to argue that if whites are not malicious, blacks and/or liberals must have screwed up. Moreover, rephrasing the question can lead to rather different results: in a 1980 poll only 5% supported segregation, but only 40% supported a law stating that a homeowner could not refuse to sell because of race. The authors go on about how in the post-war period African-Americans were discriminated in social security legislation, GI bill benefits and housing segregation. We also relearn about the insufficiently notorious effects of urban renewal and automation.

What is best about the book are the statistics it provides showing consistent racial gaps, even when corrected for class, age, income or any other variable. For example 53% of mortgages in black Chicago middle-class neighbourhoods are from sub-prime lenders, whereas only 12% of mortgages in white neighbourhoods are. African-Americans are 25% less likely to get mammograpy screening, notwithstanding age or income, while a 1985 Massachusetts study showed that whites underwent significantly more corony surgery than blacks. 61% of basketball players were black in 1996-97, but 81.5 % of coaches were white; 52% of football players are black but in 2001 nearly 97% of head coaching positions were white. During the 1990s in Los Angeles, Latinos make up 41% of the population, but only 6% of the jurors. It is often said that spiralling illegitimacy is the key reason for persistent black poverty today, but the President's Council of Economic Advisers has noted that the poverty gap would have fallen by only a fifth had there been no changes in black family structure since 1967. Likewise the Thernstroms et al have argued that high black youth unemployment is the result of their demand for excessive wages. Yet studies have shown that their length of employment is not correlated with wage demands. The gap between black and white test scores has infuriated potential university students. But the correlation between scores and success is somewhat weaker for women and Asians. Another questionable use of data by "racial realists" is their concentration of Berkeley in the 1980s. There the white graduation rate within 6 years was 88% but only 59% for blacks. But in 28 other colleges the white average was 86% and the black average 75%. Might this not say more about the problems of particular universities than an inherent cultural failing of African-Americans?

We also learn about a third wave of criminology scholarship and we learn how only 26% of the gap between blacks and whites drug offences in Pennsylvania is the result of the higher arrest rate among blacks. Even after making every allowance Georgia blacks are five times more likely to get life sentences for drug offences than whites. We see at every stage of the arrest process, from scholars such as Madeline Wordes, George Bridges, and Michael Leiber, a clear bias against African-Americans. Although the prospect that somewhere, somehow affirmative action might hurt white men has haunted the conservative imagination, only 4% of 1990-94 sex/age discrimination suits were launched by white men, (yet they file three-quarters of age discrimination suits). Oddly enough, racial realists have blamed blacks for inadequate black representation. Supposedly they won't vote for whites. Yet in the past few decades only 0.5% of white majority districts elections have chosen a black representative. And whites have shown great reluctance or active hostility in voting for blacks in prominent elections in Chicago, Philadelphia and California. The authors conclude with sensible suggestions for reforms in education, stronger civil rights protection and an improved welfare state.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative & Thought-Provoking, November 18, 2003

By 

"rbphd2009" (Western Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (George Gund Foundation Book in African American Studies) (Hardcover)

It presents information in such a way that you are at the very least, forced to consider what they've presented. As a self-identified "African-American" who considers himself a conservative, I think this book does a great job of presenting the foundation of how the problem of race still exists and presents pragmatic ideas - however controversial - that are far better, in my view, than maintaining the status quo.

If those who on principle oppose these ideas (specifically, the conservatives this book spends a lot of time lambasting) would come out with substantive data to disprove what this book says, the race debate would become a lot clearer and would bring us closer to realizing a better America for all.