1 of 7
That the United States of America, "a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," began as a slave society is a profound historical irony. The "original sin" of slavery has left an indelible imprint on our nation's soul. Hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in a tragic, calamitous civil war—the price this new democracy had to pay to rid itself of that most undemocratic institution. But, of course, the end of slavery did not usher in an era of democratic equality for blacks. Another century was to pass before a national commitment to pursue that goal could be achieved. Meaningful civic inclusion even now eludes many of our fellow citizens who are recognizably of African descent. What does that say about the character of our civic culture as we move into a new century? For its proper telling, this peculiarly American story in black and white requires an appreciation of irony and a sense of the tragic.
White attitudes toward blacks today are not what they were at the end of slavery, or in the 1930s. Nor is black marginalization nearly as severe. Segregation is dead, and the open violence once used to enforce it has for all practical purposes been eradicated. We have made great progress, but we have a long way to go, and we are in deep disagreement about how to further proceed.
The problem we have solved is the one Gunnar Myrdal described in his classic 1944 treatise, An American Dilemma. There he contrasted America's lofty political ideals with the seemingly permanent second-class status of Negroes. This framing of the problem shaped the conscience of a generation of American intellectuals and activists coming to maturity in the years 1945-60. Myrdal urged whites to choose the nobility of their ideals over the comfort of long-standing social arrangements. In due course they did, and that was a great achievement.
Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom belong to that postwar generation of racial progressives who believed in Myrdal's vision and struggled to see it realized. Like a great many others of similar bent, they retained an abiding interest in the subject, but they grew ever more estranged from what the "progressive" position on racial issues came to represent.
Stephan Thernstrom is the Winthrop Professor of History at Harvard University, and a pioneer in the field of quantitative social history. He earned his reputation a quarter-century ago with the publication of The Other Bostonians, a now-classic study of Boston's immigrant working class. Abigail Thernstrom, his wife, is a political scientist, best known for her 1987 book, Whose Votes Count? That prizewinning work offered a powerful and, for many people, compelling critique of federal voting-rights law as it evolved over the two decades following the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
For the past seven years, this superbly qualified team has labored to produce a comprehensive assessment of changes in American race relations in the half-century since the appearance of Myrdal's epic. America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible is the result. It is a large, ambitious book that combines historical narrative and data-driven policy analysis with trenchant social criticism. The three-part text treats the history of blacks from Reconstruction through the 1960s; economic, political, and social progress for blacks over the past 30 years; and recent race-oriented public policies affecting education, voting, employment, and government contracting. The final two chapters survey the current racial climate and envision how American race relations might develop in the future.
share this page
RSS Feed
