G-Man
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Joined: 27 Nov 2004
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 Posted: Fri 12 Jan 2007 18:01 Post subject: The Ordeal of Integration |
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Just finished reading this book...I highly recommend it
From Amazon.com
| Quote: | http://www.amazon.com/Ordeal-Integration-Progress-Resentment-Americas/dp/188717897X/sr=1-2/qid=1168624401/ref=sr_1_2/102-0404853-4719300?ie=UTF8&s=books
The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America's "Racial" Crisis
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
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.
The New York Times Book Review, James Q. Wilson
Although most Americans, black and white, now judge people as unique individuals and not as racial symbols ... too many, including many prominent leaders, continue to believe that symbols are all that matter. Orlando Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard and the author of distinguished books on slavery and the emergence of human freedom, takes on these people with The Ordeal of Immigration, a book that is defiant, even angry, often right and sometimes wrong. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Commentary, Arch Puddington
Once touted as a centerpiece of the Clinton administration's second-term agenda, the President's race-relations initiative has come under heavy fire in the few short months of its existence. As critics have observed, the effort revealed a notable reluctance in the President and his advisers to give a hearing not only to conservative opponents of affirmative action but also to the handful of liberal thinkers who dissent from today's orthodoxies.
Orlando Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard, certainly qualifies as a liberal dissenter. He utterly rejects the unspoken premise that underlies the President's race-relations initiative--namely, that America is a racist society in need of a cure. It therefore comes as something of a surprise that he emerges here as a committed supporter of racial preferences. The case that he makes for them is by far the weakest part of the book. For one thing, his insistence that racial preferences are just another attempt to smooth out the rough edges of the economy is simply not convincing. Furthermore, Patterson never comes to grips with why so many Americans object to racial preferences. His failure to address seriously the arguments of affirmative action's critics deepens the well-grounded suspicion that good counterarguments on behalf of affirmative action simply cannot be found. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. |
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