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Cover of Turning back

Turning back

the retreat from racial justice in American thought and policy

By Stephen Steinberg

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Publish Date

1995

Publisher

Beacon Press

Language

eng

Pages

282

Description:

Turning Back traces social science writing on race relations over the past half-century. Beginning with Gunnar Myrdal's classic, An American Dilemma, Stephen Steinberg shows how mainstream social science placed a liberal gloss on racism and failed to champion civil rights. Not until the racial crisis of the 1960s was there a willingness to confront racism "in all of its hideous fullness," and to place responsibility for the nation's racial problems on major political and economic institutions. During the post-Civil Rights era the focus of blame has again shifted away from societal institutions onto blacks themselves. Turning Back is a trenchant critique of this "scholarship of backlash." Steinberg challenges liberals as well as conservatives, blacks as well as whites, who have fueled the backlash and provided a spurious intellectual cover for gutting affirmative action and other policies designed to alleviate racial inequalities.