Synopses & Reviews
Americans believe strongly in the socially transformative power of education, and the idea that we can challenge racial injustice by reducing white prejudice has long been a core component of this faith. How did we get here? In this first-rate intellectual history, Leah N. Gordon jumps into this and other big questions about race, power, and social justice.
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; To answer these questions, From Power to Prejudice examines American academiaand#151;both black and whiteand#151;in the 1940s and and#8217;50s. Gordon presents four competing visions of and#160;and#147;the race problemand#8221; and documents how an individualistic paradigm, which presented white attitudes as the source of racial injustice, gained traction. A number of factors, Gordon shows, explain racial individualismand#8217;s postwar influence: individuals were easier to measure than social forces; psychology was well funded; studying political economy was difficult amid McCarthyism; and individualism was useful in legal attacks on segregation. Highlighting vigorous midcentury debate over the meanings of racial justice and equality, From Power to Prejudice reveals how one particular vision of social justice won out among many contenders.
Review
"
A most impressive work, tackling a demanding and important topic--the myth that we now live in a post-racial society--in a novel, urgent, and compelling way." Robin Blackburn
Review
"A most impressive work, tackling a demanding and important topic—the myth that we now live in a postracial society—in a novel, urgent, and compelling way. The authors dispel this myth by squarely addressing the paradox that racism is scientifically discredited but, like witchcraft before it, retains a social rationale in societies that remain highly unequal and averse to sufficiently critical engagement with their own history and traditions." Robin Blackburn
Review
"With its five institutional case studies, From Power to Prejudice offers a new interpretation of the rise and fall of anti-prejudice education in the United States. While others have emphasized the structural causes of racial inequality and discrimination in American life, Gordon highlights the ways in which an ideology of racial individualismand#8212;the notion that a society's racial order hinges on individual attitudesand#8212;came to shape American psychology, sociology, and ultimately education in the mid-twentieth century. The result is a refreshingly critical look at the relationship between social science and social reform."
Review
and#8220;From Power to Prejudiceand#160;is a powerfully argued, deeply grounded study of a crucial period in the development of American racial discourses. The strength of Gordonand#8217;s work lies in the depth of the archival research and her judicious culling of evidence from that research base to illustrate the complexity of the relationship between theory and practice in this thorny area of inquiry. This is an important and compelling study.and#8221;
Review
"What kind of people become racists? Gordon shows how mid-century Americans came to see racism as a personal problem, rooted in individual psychology rather than structural inequality. But socio-economic theories of prejudice continued to sprout, especially at historically black colleges and universities, where scholars connected racism to labor markets, housing patterns, and educational opportunity. What kind of society produces racial injustice and discrimination? That's a very different order of question, and Gordon's tightly argued book calls us to answer it."
Review
andldquo;Gordon has written a carefully reasoned account of how and why American liberals turned to individualized ways of framing the race issue in the decades after World War II, with social scientific theories and legal strategies that treated racial inequality as a problem of white prejudice and individual rights violations that could be educated or litigated away.and#160;Her explanation is multi-layered and convincingandmdash;about the basis of racial individualismandrsquo;s appeal, about the decidedly uneven compromises it exacted, and about the long-term consequences of postwar liberalismandrsquo;s constrained vision of racial reform.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;In this highly original book, Gordon provides a rich historical account of how, in the years after World War II, American culture came to understand racism as a product of personal prejudice rather than social structure. She shows how this sudden turnaround in conventional wisdom arose from a convergence of factorsandmdash;including the rise of survey research, which provided a scientific way to measure attitudes; the attraction of this method for both researchers and research funders, as providing a less political and more andlsquo;objectiveandrsquo; way to analyze race; and the usefulness of this approach for advocates of school desegregation, who saw that if prejudice was the problem then education was the answer.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Tackling the myth of a post-racial society.
Synopsis
Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed.
That the promised post-racial age has not dawned, the authors argue, reflects the failure of Americans to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. That failure should worry everyone who cares about democratic institutions.
About the Author
Barbara J. Fields is Professor of History at Columbia University, author of
Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century and coauthor of
Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War.
KAREN E. FIELDS, an independent scholar, holds degrees from Harvard University, Brandeis University, and the Sorbonne. She is the author of many articles and three published books: Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa, about millennarianism; Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir (with Mamie Garvin Fields), about life in the 20th-century South; and a retranslation of Emile Durkheim’s masterpiece, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. She has two works in progress: Bordeaux’s Africa, about the view of slavery from a European port city, and Race Matters in the American Academy.