Challenging the Civil Rights Establishment: Profiles of a New Black Vanguard - Hardcover

Conti, J. G.; Stetson, Brad

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0275944603 ISBN 13: 9780275944605

Publisher: Praeger, 1993

Synopsis

Challenging the Civil Rights Establishment is a compelling introduction to the ideas of black social critics who oppose the most prominent voices of black America's leadership. In their analysis of the vanguard, which provokes the ire of the civil rights establishment, J.G. Conti and Brad Stetson focus on four men: Thomas Sowell, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution who targets Marxism, the knowledge class, and entitlement programs; Shelby Steele, author of The Content of Our Character, who discusses the experience of American blacks from an existentialist viewpoint; Robert Woodson, founder of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, the best known advocate of interior activism; and Glenn Loury, a conservative political economist at Boston University whose primary theme is the distinction he makes between the enemy without (racism), and the enemy within (dysfunctional behavior that perpetuates poverty and dependency). In speeches, in their writings, and in interviews with Conti and Stetson, these thinkers discuss how the construction of public policy has devolved into a kind of ethnic cheerleading that exalts race and ethnicity above personal character and behaviors in determinations of what is fair.

The spectrum of these critics' opinions includes neoconservative, libertarian, populist, and democratic social thought, but Conti and Stetson have identified commonalities that structure their discussion: members of the black vanguard reject the notion that racial faithfulness requires ideological homogeneity; they argue that a chilling silence has been spread around a ghetto-specific culture of poverty by black advocates who fear that such discussions will play into the hands of enemies of the black community; they maintain that racism is not a sufficient cause for black poverty and other social problems experienced by blacks; and they object on moral and pragmatic grounds the civil rights leadership's reliance on the political capital of white guilt. De-emphasizing racism as a generator of poverty, they explain the proliferation of the black underclass in other ways, including structural changes in urban economies and welfare work disincentives. In Challenging the Civil Rights Establishment, Conti and Stetson break through the ideological pretension that has overrun clear thinking and the empirical data of human experience in discussions of race and culture.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph G. Conti earned a PhD in Social Ethics at the University of Southern California, where he did research in media culture, the psychology of race relations, and comparative religion.

Brad Stetson also holds a PhD in Social Ethics from the University of Southern California, where he focused his study on religious and political philosophy, as well as on the ethical implications of American cultural pluralism and racial diveristy.

Reviews

This detailed, accessible volume analyzes the theories of four prominent black conservatives--academics Thomas Sowell and Glenn Loury, essayist Shelby Steele and Robert Woodson, founder of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise--who argue that "ideological pretension has overrun clear thinking and the empirical data of human experience when it comes to discussions of race and culture." Accordingly, they do not see racism as monolithic; they are prepared to criticize ghetto culture; and they question racially based affirmative action. While Conti and Stetson delineate their subjects' positions in a nuanced way, they stint on reporting on their critics. Moreover, the authors exaggerate, suggesting that liberals are monolithic on racial issues and claiming that the media ignore these four thinkers. Conti is a doctoral candidate in social ethics at the University of Southern California, Stetson teaches social ethics at San Francisco Seminary.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Praeger
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0275944603
• ISBN 13: 9780275944605
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264