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The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America's 'Racial' Crisis
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A self-described "historical sociologist" who brings the perspectives of a humanist to his analysis of social issues, the Jamaican-born scholar and novelist Orlando Patterson has written acclaimed studies of slavery and freedom. In this collection of five closely linked essays, Patterson offers a simulating and original analysis of the situation of people of African descent in the United States today. He begins by proposing that we substitute the terms ethnicity, Afro-American, and Euro-American for race, black, and white, while acknowledging that particular ethnic groups have repeatedly sought to dominate or exterminate others on the basis of perceived differences in ancestry. Despite this recognition of racism as a potent force in history, he finds grounds for optimism in statistics that show a dramatic improvement in Afro-Americans' economic status over the last three decades and in polling data that reveal a pronounced decline in racial prejudice among Euro-Americans over the same period. Patterson's insistence on the dignity of the individual is at the heart of his thinking. He is impatient with analysts who cast Afro-Americans primarily as victims, and he rejects remedies such as sensitivity training, finding them manipulative and condescending. But he makes an eloquent case for a limited form of affirmative action to redress historic injustices. His voice is personal and sometimes passionate, but informed by bracing intellectual rigor as well as a vision of a just and humane society.