Race Relations: A Critique

by Stephen Steinberg

Stephen Steinberg offers a bold challenge to prevailing thought on race and ethnicity in American society. In a penetrating critique of the famed race relations paradigm, he asks why a paradigm invented four decades before the Civil Rights Revolution still dominates both academic and popular discourses four decades after that revolution. On race, Steinberg argues that even the language of "race relations" obscures the structural basis of racial hierarchy and inequality. Generations of sociologists have unwittingly practiced a "white sociology" that reflects white interests and viewpoints. What happens, he asks, when we foreground the interests and viewpoints of the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of racial oppression? On ethnicity, Steinberg turns the tables and shows that the early sociologists who predicted ultimate assimilation have been vindicated by history. The evidence is overwhelming that the new immigrants, including Asians and most Latinos, are following in the footsteps of past immigrants―footsteps leading into the melting pot. But even today, there is the black exception. The end result is a dual melting pot―one for peoples of African descent and the other for everybody else. Race A Critique cuts through layers of academic jargon to reveal unsettling truths that call into question the nature and future of American nationality.

Genres: Academic

204 pages, Paperback

First published July 17, 2007

Reviews

[Elizabeth Higginbotham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steinberg makes solid case for the failure of sociology to deal with racial oppression. Indeed the very wording of race relations obscure the power dimension of the relationship. He pay respect to critics of the past, DuBois, Cox, etc. and has a nice treatment of the contributions of early Black sociologists and how they had to walk a fine line given the power structure that shaped the scholarship of race. A well researched and argue book. Not sure where I was when it was published I 2007, but glad I read it now.

[Sanchita · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very accessible book that critiques the seemingly neutral sociological term "race relations". It analyses the field and breaks down the theory to show how sociology is complicit in furthering racism in its knowledge production

[chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Right on!