The Ordeal Of Integration: Progress And Resentment In America's ""Racial"" Crisis

by Orlando Patterson

For many years Orlando Patterson has been a major contributor to the public discussion of race in America. In this eagerly anticipated new volume, the author of the National Book Award–winner Freedom in the Making of Western Culture presents a comprehensive exploration of contemporary interethnic relations.Americans are in the midst of a rejuvenated conversation about race. How we talk about race—or fail to—is one of the central themes of this book, which is certain to spark lively debate among intellectuals and policy advocates.Unflinching in his analysis, Patterson chides professional race advocates, the mainstream media, and his fellow academics for homogenizing the 33 million Americans of African ancestry into a single group beset by crises and intractable dilemmas. His willingness to challenge the received wisdom of conservatives, liberals, and genetic determinists alike affords us the opportunity to critically examine our own preconceived notions and prejudices.An experienced policy advisor, Patterson brings to the national discussion a lifetime of study of slavery, freedom, and ethnic inequality worldwide. His practical recommendations emphasize solutions to problems too often described as unsolvable. For the one-fourth of the Afro-American population at the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder, his suggestions include housing vouchers, limiting the influx of low-skilled immigrants, and instituting a highly original policy to reduce teenage childbearing. He remains firmly committed to school desegregation, supports intermarriage as a means of promoting full integration, and takes American religious leaders to task for the ”scandal of segregation” within their churches. Responding to widespread antagonism toward affirmative action, Patterson advocates retaining it for another fifteen years, eventually replacing it with a class-based policy.Standing as a challenge to those who insist on dwelling on the failures of race relations, The Ordeal of Integration admonishes Americans to stop exaggerating the intractability of persistent ethnic problems and start focusing on what works.

Genres: Race, Social, Sociology

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University; the author of Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and Slavery and Social Death; and the editor of The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, for which he was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. His work has been honored by the American Sociological Association and the American Political Science Association, among others, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as Special Advisor for Social Policy and Development to Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley and was awarded the Order of Distinction by the Government of Jamaica.

Reviews

[Elyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not going to attempt to summarize the in-depth essays about the challenges of integration that comprise this excellent book. What I will say is that Orlando Patterson presents some compelling ideas drawn from philospohy, sociology, political economy, and statistical studies.

What sets this book apart is that Patterson transcends the typical rhetoric I have encountered in other books about integration, beginning with his use of different terminology to talk about this subject. He also veers into ideas that seem conservative, as well as highly radical concepts. He has liberated himself from rigid belief systems and chosen instead to review the facts and present new theories.

In the end, I experienced a significant paradigm shift in my own thinking. Best of all, in the last chapter, he outlines some detailed strategies to overcome the ordeal of integration.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was written in the 90s, so it may be quite dated in the post-Obama and post-Trump era. However, Patterson makes interesting observations on the paradoxes of America's troubled legacy of integration. I admire his defense of affirmative action more than his assertion of equivalence between the right wing's genetic determinism and the left wing's "socioeconomic" determinism.

[Ejcarter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Orlando Patterson is a very smart man, and like his other writings this is filled with trenchant apercus and remarkable even-handedness. However it is much less compelling than Rituals of Blood, the second volume in what was to have been a trilogy (volume three has yet to appear). The Ordeal of Integration packs too much into its 200 pages and doesn't quite reach the devastatingly brilliant heights of Rituals of Blood.

[Izlinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dense. It was a struggle to read it and I didn't read all of it for class. The conclusion was quite repetitive. I did find the chapter on affirmative action interesting, though.

[Jonathan]

None

[Aimee Wilson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Major holes in argument.