Synopses & Reviews
"An important contribution to the on-going national dialogue concerning the need for planning for an increasingly aged population and its impact on our social, political, medical, economic institutions."
--Wisconsin Bookwatch
"Based on their assessments of the levels of need for the long-term care among African-American, Latino, and non-Latino white older persons, the authors offer viable and attractive possible alternatives to institutionalization in the long-term care of the elderly."
--Nurse Practitioner
"A major contribution. Should be a part of every course on social gerontology, long-term care, the demography of aging, or formal/informal support networks of the elderly."
--Robert Joseph Taylor, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan
America is getting older. By the year 2010, almost one in five Americans will be 65 years of age or older.
The combined forces of low fertility and longer life spans among all racial and ethnic groups have resulted in a disproportionate increase in the number of individuals over 65 and an even faster increase in the proportion of those individuals over eighty-five. As a result, the nation faces an unprecedented challenge in addressing the economic, medical, and long-term care needs of this older population at the same time that it assures the welfare of the young. The growth of the cost of the long-term care of the elderly is one of the major forces behind recent increases in Medicaid expenditures, and any reformed health care financing system will have to find ways of providing high quality long-term care to older Americans at a reasonable cost.
In a racially and culturally diverse nation like the United States, official policy regarding the care of the elderly simply cannot be based on the assumption that the elderly are a culturally and socially monolithic population. The cultural, social, and economic situations of the elderly simply differ too greatly and the family's role in their care is affected by important cultural and social factors.
In Who Will Care for Us? Ronald J. and Jacqueline L. Angel argue that policies based on the assumption of a homogenous population will fail to take advantage of the opportunities that ethnic and cultural diversity offer for the long-term care of the elderly. The authors examine the great racial and ethnic diversity among the elderly in the contemporary U.S. in terms of living arrangements, economic well-being, and reliance on formal and family-based sources of support. Based on their assessments of the levels of need for long-term care among black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic white older persons, they offer viable and attractive possible alternatives to institutionalization in the long-term care of the elderly.
Review
"Pamela Newkirk is uniquely equipped to undertake a searching examination of the American institution that distorts perceptions of some of us for consumption by the rest of us. In Within the Veil, Newkirk renders compelling evidence that American news media have exacerbated more than ameliorated America's complex racial dilemma."-Randall Robinson,author of The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks
Review
"In telling the stories of forgotten pioneers like Lester Walton, George Schuyler, Earl Brown, Ted Poston, and Ben Holman, and in detailing the pressures felt and obstacles overcome by more recent generations of African-American journalists, Pamela Newkirk's Within the Veil makes a valuable contribution to the history of the American press."-Ben Yagoda,associate professor of journalism, University of Delaware, author of About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made, and coeditor of The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of American Journalism
Review
"In many ways, today's news business suffers from a terrible case of isolationism, not just racial but socioeconomic. If every news editor in America read Within the Veil, it could transform dynamics within the newsroom and what appears on the screen and printed page. And for everyone else—the informed citizens of America who wonder how the media works—this book, with its gripping behind-the-scenes newsroom dramas, is a damn good read."-Farai Chideya,author of The Color of Our Future and Don't Believe the Hype, and editor of PopandPolitics.com
Review
"A compelling look at the power of the media from an award-winning journalist who fearlessly and passionately addresses critical issues confronting African-American journalists working for mainstream newspapers and magazines." -Essence,
Review
"In her eloquent take on media Eurocentrism, Pamela Newkirk observes that anti-African exclusion very much characterizes the major media. . . . An hermeneutical tour-de-force."-New York Amsterdam News,
Synopsis
Winner of the National Press Club Prize for Media Criticism.
Companion website: http://www.nyupress.nyu.edu/authors/veil.html
Thirty years ago, the Kerner Commission Report made national headlines by exposing the consistently biased coverage afforded African Americans in the mainstream media. While the report acted as a much ballyhooed wake-up call, the problems it identified have stubbornly persisted, despite the infusion of black and other racial minority journalists into the newsroom.
In Within the Veil, Pamela Newkirk unmasks the ways in which race continues to influence reportage, both overtly and covertly. Newkirk charts a series of race-related conflicts at news organizations across the country, illustrating how African American journalists have influenced and been denied influence to the content, presentation, and very nature of news.
Through anecdotes culled from interviews with over 100 broadcast and print journalists, Newkirk exposes the trials and triumphs of African American journalists as they struggle in pursuit of more equitable coverage of racial minorities. She illuminates the agonizing dilemmas they face when writing stories critical of blacks, stories which force them to choose between journalistic integrity, their own advancement, and the almost certain enmity of the black community.
Within the Veil is a gripping front-line report on the continuing battle to integrate America's newsrooms and news coverage.
About the Author
Pamela Newkirk is Assistant Professor of Journalism at New York University and a regular writer for The Nation.