Problem of the Century: Racial Stratification in the United States

by Elijah Anderson (Editor), Douglas Massey (Editor)

In 1899 the great African American scholar, W.E.B. DuBois, published The Philadelphia Negro, the first systematic case study of an African American community and one of the foundations of American sociology. DuBois prophesied that the color line would be the problem of the twentieth century. One hundred years later, Problem of the Century reflects upon his prophecy, exploring the ways in which the color line is still visible in the labor market, the housing market, education, family structure, and many other aspects of life at the turn of a new century.

The book opens with a theoretical discussion of the way racial identity is constructed and institutionalized. When the government classifies races and confers group rights upon them, is it subtly reenforcing damaging racial divisions, or redressing the group privileges that whites monopolized for so long? The book also delineates the social dynamics that underpin racial inequality. The contributors explore the causes and consequences of high rates of mortality and low rates of marriage in black communities, as well as the way race affects a person's chances of economic success. African Americans may soon lose their historical position as America's majority minority, and the book also examines how race plays out in the sometimes fractious relations between blacks and immigrants. The final part of the book shows how the color line manifests itself at work and in schools. Contributors find racial issues at play on both ends of the occupational ladder—among absentee fathers paying child support from their meager earnings and among black executives prospering in the corporate world. In the schools, the book explores how race defines a student's peer group and how peer pressure affects a student's grades.

Problem of the Century draws upon the distinguished faculty of sociologists at the University of Pennsylvania, where DuBois conducted his research for The Philadelphia Negro. The contributors combine a scrupulous commitment to empirical inquiry with an eclectic openness to different methods and approaches. Problem of the Century blends ethnographies and surveys, statistics and content analyses, census data and historical records, to provide a far-reaching examination of racial inequality in all its contemporary manifestations.

478 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2001

About the author

Elijah Anderson holds the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professorship in Sociology at Yale University, where he teaches and directs the Urban Ethnography Project. His most prominent works include The Cosmopolitan Canopy and the award-winning books Code of the Street and Streetwise. His writings have also appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The New York Times Book Review. He lives in New Haven and Philadelphia.

Reviews

[Ahmeria McElroy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first discovered this book when I lost interest in my previous one. I came to the library to find something that would be compelling and ended picking a book about racial stratification in the United States. It has always been a topic of interest for me, however I wanted to read a book that was fairly challenging. The book ended up doing exactly that. I wouldn't particularly identify this book as a story, but rather an analyzation and expansion of the famous W.E.B. DuBois , “The Philadelphia Negro”. Overall it explores topics that go deeper into racism in the U.S. The book provides graphs and statistics for clarifications and a more profound understanding. It also features analyzations as well as expanded thoughts on paragraphs from “The Philadelphia Negro”. The authors did an outstanding job on truly going deeper into explanation and commentary. However, the clarity of the text opposes that. In many parts it was extremely difficult to understand what the authors were trying to communicate. After actually understanding what the text was saying, it seemed that there would be an easier way to explain.
In general, this book was very informative and gave deep insight on racial stratification in the U.S. It allows readers to better understand perspectives as well as reasoning behind certain systems. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to challenge themselves in comprehension with complicated topics.