Reckoning with Race: America's Failure

by Eugene R. Dattel

Reckoning with Race confronts America's most intractable problem—race. The book outlines in a provocative, novel manner American racial issues from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. It explodes myths about the South as America's exclusive racial scapegoat. The book moves to the Great Migration north and the urban ghettos which still plague America.



Importantly, the evergreen topics of identity, assimilation, and separation come to the fore in a balanced, uncompromising, and unflinching narrative. People, cities, and regions are profiled. Despite civil rights legislation, the racial divide between the races remains a chasm. A plethora of reports, commissions, conferences, and other highly visible gestures, purporting to do something have generated publicity, but little else. There remain no adequate structures—family, community or church—to provide leadership. Destructive cultural traits cannot be explained solely by poverty.



The book asks and answers many questions. After emancipation, how were blacks historically segregated from the rest of American society? Why is self-segregation still a feature of black society? Why do large numbers of blacks resist assimilation and the acceptance of middle class norms of behavior? Why has there been so little black penetration in the private sector? Why did the removal of overt legal segregation and civil rights legislation in the 1960s not settle the racial conundrum? What are the differences and similarities between the leaders of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and today? Why do we still have the problems enumerated in the Kerner Commission report (1968) after trillions of dollars have been spent promote black progress? What, if anything, should be done, to eliminate the racial divide?

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction

350 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 19, 2017

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sober, dispassionate analysis of the failure of integrating black Americans into mainstream economic life. Dattel is an economic historian who explores the various responses of black leaders throughout history toward white racial animosity. Some of Dattel's most surprising, and potentially controversial conclusions are:

1) that the animosity by Northern whites is mostly forgotten, but was a key factor playing into the awful condition of black America. While the South is, quite rightly, pointed to as the engine driving slavery, Jim Crow, etc., part of the reason things were so terrible was due to Northern containment strategies of keeping blacks in the South. Some of the racist laws Dattel highlights from Northern states are truly jaw dropping. In addition, even after the Great Migration, the end of Jim Crow, etc., the Northern whites still had racist attitudes toward blacks that were hypocritical in the extreme.

Dattel rightly points out that to reckon with race, we must understand this was not the South's failure only, but *America's* failure.

2) The other potentially controversial argument is Dattel's contention that what is needed today is an approach to race relations that is fundamentally different than that during the Civil Rights movement. Many of the issues of the Civil Rights movement, in Dattel's consideration, have been overcome. Voting rights, Jim Crow laws, etc. have all been overturned and, further, America's views on race have changed significantly since the turbulent days of the Civil Rights era. What is needed today is to continue to move away from a politics of grievance toward self-reflection and integration in the mainstream of American economic life. "Bourgeois" virtues like thrift, hard-work, fidelity are not "white" virtues but virtues that are colorblind and the key toward the economic mainstream. Many of the tactics used by prominent black leaders and organizations today, Dattel argues, are no longer sufficient for the task of racial integration.

I found Dattel to be deeply insightful. If we are going to have a better "conversation" about race today, and especially with regards to policy, then books like *Reckoning with Race* should be invited to the table. Highly recommended.

[Alex MacMillan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr. Dattel builds upon his important work in Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power, to correct the historical record as to the moral culpability of the white North in black oppression from the 19th century onward. Most historical accounts use a simplistic "good vs. evil" narrative when depicting the Civil War and failure of Reconstruction, with northern whites being the heroes and southern whites the villains. Dattel is right to emphasize how antebellum America is really a tale of "bad vs. worse," such as occurred with the conflict between the USSR and Nazi Germany during WW2. Both the North and South intentionally practiced extensive systems of de jure and de facto racial prejudice to deny most black Americans the ability to assimilate into mainstream society or otherwise have agency over their own lives. The only difference is that the South was somewhat more overt in its oppression.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really Interesting Perspectives

This book opened my eyes to many of the barriers the black community has faced and is facing. The major problems that are usually attributed to the Jim Crow South are just as prevalent in the north. But the author doesn’t just look backwards. He stresses the importance of self introspection and of family, education and behavioral norms as tools to achieve economic assimilation. And economic assimilation is key. The author makes a case that separatist movements will only make things worse.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enlightening

Probably hard for either black or white to read; given time, logic, reason and civility will produce a better harmony of understanding.