The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America - Hardcover

Smith, Rogers M.; Klinkner, Philip A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226443396 ISBN 13: 9780226443393

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1999

Synopsis

American life is filled with talk of progress and equality, especially when the issue is that of race. But has the history of race in America really been the continuous march toward equality we'd like to imagine it has? This sweeping history of race in America argues quite the opposite: that progress toward equality has been sporadic, isolated, and surrounded by long periods of stagnation and retrenchment.

"[An] unflinching portrait of the leviathan of American race relations. . . . This important book should be read by all who aspire to create a more perfect union."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Could it be that our unswerving belief in the power of our core values to produce racial equality is nothing but a comforting myth? That is the main argument put forth by Philip Klinkner and Rogers Smith . . . The Unsteady March is disturbing because it calls into question our cherished national belief and does so convincingly. . . . [It] is beautifully written, and the social history it provides is illuminating and penetrating."—Aldon Morris, American Journal of Sociology

Winner of the Horace Mann Bond Award of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University.

About this title

Review:

This examination of the era after the civil rights movement can best be described by the old saying "one step forward, two steps back." Klinkner and Smith attack the widely held view that greater racial equality in the United States is preordained by the characteristics and principles of the founding fathers or the tides of history. The authors look at the circumstances that fostered black civil rights, including wars and political instability; when those factors are reduced, they argue, antiblack backlash sets in, from the Reconstruction era up to post-Reagan Republicanism. The Unsteady March is an alarmist book, but not without hope. The authors offer solutions that include increased commitment to enforcing civil rights legislation, economic parity, and reform of the criminal justice system--as well as bringing back the draft and introducing a universal national service program. --Eugene Holley Jr.

From the Inside Flap:

Winner of the Horace Mann Bond Award of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University

"This book should be read by all who aspire to create a more perfect union."-Publishers Weekly, starred review

Have the history of race relations in America really been the continuous march toward equality we imagine? The Unsteady March argues quite the opposite: that progress toward equality has been sporadic, isolated, and surrounded by long periods of stagnation and retrenchment.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0226443396
• ISBN 13: 9780226443393
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 426