In a book destined to become a classic, Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom present important new information about the positive changes that have been achieved and the measurable improvement in the lives of the majority of African-Americans. Supporting their conclusions with statistics on education, earnings, and housing, they argue that the perception of serious racial divisions in this country is outdated -- and dangerous.

Originally published: New York: Grossman Publishers, 1969.

La couverture indique : "Alan Nadel's new book reminds us that most of the images on early TV were decidedly Caucasian and directed at predominantly white audiences. Television did not invent whiteness for America, but it did reinforce it as the norm - particularly during the Cold War years. Nadel now shows just how instrumental it was in constructing a narrow, conservative, and very white vision of America." "During this era, prime-time TV was dominated by "adult Westerns," with heroes like The Rebel's Johnny Yuma reincarnating Southern values and Bonanza's Cartwright family reinforcing the notion of white patriarchy - programs that, Nadel shows, bristled with Cold War messages even as they spoke to the nation's mythology. America had become visually reconfigured as a vast Ponderosa, crisscrossed by concrete highways designed to carry suburban white drivers beyond the moral challenge of racism, racial poverty, and increasingly vocal civil rights demands."

“This book is both powerful and important. Powerful for the testimony it provides from Americans of many different (and even mixed races) about their experiences. And important because there is a racial revolution underway that will upend race as we know it during the twenty-first century.” —John Kenneth White, Catholic University of America America Beyond Black and White is a call for a new way of imagining race in America. For the first time in U.S. history, the black-white dichotomy that has historically defined race and ethnicity is being challenged, not by a small minority, but by the fastest-growing and arguably most vocal segment of the increasingly diverse American population—Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Arabs, and many more—who are breaking down and recreating the very definitions of race. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of Americans who don’t fit conventional black/white categories, the author invites us to empathize with these “doubles” and to understand why they may represent our best chance to throw off the strictures of the black/white dichotomy. The revolution is already underway, as newcomers and mixed-race “fusions” refuse to engage in the prevailing Anglo- Protestant culture. Americans face two choices: understand why these individuals think as they do, or face a future that continues to define us by what divides us rather than by what unites us.

A leading voice in the Asian American community tackles what it means to be Asian American in contemporary America. This explosive book examines the current state of civil rights in the U.S. through the unique experiences of Asian Americans and how they view the democratic process.

Living in a segregated society, white Americans learn about African Americans through the images the media show. This text offers a look at the racial patterns in the mass media and how they shape the ambivalent attitudes of whites toward blacks.

Confronts the pressing problems surrounding race and diversity in the front offices of the American sports industry From the years of the Negro Leagues in baseball up to today, when college basketball programs entice and then fail to educate young Black men, sports in America have long served as a barometer of the country’s racial climate. Just as Black employees are often barred from the upper echelons of corporate America, they are underrepresented in the front offices of the sports industry as well. In this compact volume, Kenneth L. Shropshire confronts prominent racial myths head-on, offering both a history of—and solutions for—the most pressing problems currently plaguing sports. Despite the fact that Black athletes represent a huge majority of the American sports industry, the majority of ownership stake in professional basketball, baseball, and football teams is still held by white owners. And yet, when confronted with programs intended to diversify their front offices, many teams resort to the familiar refrain of merit-based excuses: there simply aren't enough qualified Black candidates or they don't know how to network. These hollow excuses not only stigmatize and exclude Black employees, but directly contradict the important value Black candidates can bring to these roles. In the insular world of sports, where former players often move up to become coaches, managers, executives, and owners, Black candidates are eminently qualified. After decades of active involvement with their sport, they often bring to the table experiences more relevant to the Black players on their teams. As a central aspect of American life, the sports industry has a responsibility to be a leader in the fight for racial equality—a responsibility that has not yet been met. In Black and White takes the industry to task, revealing claims of colorblindness and reverse racism as self-serving deflection and scrutinizing professional and collegiate sports, sports agents, and owners alike. No mere critique, however, the volume looks optimistically forward, outlining strategies that will drive the sports industry toward greater racial equality, and help it lead the way for racial justice efforts throughout America.

This book reveals the stunning early work of John G. Zimmerman (1927-2002), a true icon of American photography. His massive oeuvre gives a unique panorama of American life and culture in the second half of the twentieth century. This publication presents a selection of black-and-white pictures, shot between 1950 and 1978, which show the rough and uncut visual ingenuity of Zimmerman. -- back of dust jacket.

A groundbreaking critique of civil rights written by a federal judge, "One Nation Indivisible" explains why policies designed to repair biracial separation don't work in multicultural America and can actually foster ethnic division.

Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. This revelatory history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions. It also tells a tale of loss. As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. After emancipation, many African Americans came to regard passing as a form of betrayal, a selling of one’s birthright. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one’s own. Although black Americans who adopted white identities reaped benefits of expanded opportunity and mobility, Hobbs helps us to recognize and understand the grief, loneliness, and isolation that accompanied—and often outweighed—these rewards. By the dawning of the civil rights era, more and more racially mixed Americans felt the loss of kin and community was too much to bear, that it was time to “pass out” and embrace a black identity. Although recent decades have witnessed an increasingly multiracial society and a growing acceptance of hybridity, the problem of race and identity remains at the center of public debate and emotionally fraught personal decisions.