Michael J. Klarman; author of From Jim Crow to Civil Rights; which won the prestigious Bancroft Prize in American History; is one of the leading authorities on the history of civil rights law in the United States. In Unfinished Business; he illuminates the course of racial equality in America; revealing that we have made less progress than we like to think. Indeed; African Americans have had to fight for everything they have achieved. Klarman highlights a variety of social and political factors that have influenced the path of racial progress--wars; migrations; urbanization; shifting political coalitions--and he looks in particular at the contributions of law and of court decisions to American equality. The author argues that court decisions tend to reflect the racial mores of the times; which is why the Supreme Court has not been a heroic defender of the rights of racial minorities. And even when the Court has promoted progressive racial change; its decisions have often been unenforced; in part because severely oppressed groups rarely have the resources necessary to force the issue. Klarman also sheds light on the North/South dynamic and how it has influenced racial progress; arguing that as southerners have become more anxious about outside challenges to their system of white supremacy; they have acted in ways that eventually undermined that system. For example; as southern slave owners demanded greater guarantees for slavery from the federal government; they alienated northerners; who came to fear a slave power conspiracy that would interfere with their liberties. Unfinished Business offers an invaluable; succinct account of racial equality and civil rights throughout American history.
#136890 in Books Shapiro; Thomas M. 2005-01-27Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 6.00 x .90 x 9.00l; .78 #File Name: 0195181387258 pages
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Amazing Read! So Much Knowledge!By CustomerI'm am biracial and never really believed that blacks couldn't as successful as whites. This book really opened my and I actually related to how black families don't provide their children with a head start and not because they don't want to; they just don't have a long lineage of wealth. This was a great read and I don't normally read this type of book. I couldn't put it down!5 of 6 people found the following review helpful. A HEADSTART FOR WHITE PEOPLEBy AlanWarnerThis book does an excellent job of pointing out the wealth discrepancy between white and black people but this book does not go into depth as to why that difference exists today that is why I recommend that you first read the book WHEN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WAS WHITE by Ira Katznelson before you read THE HIDDEN COST OF BEING AFRICAN AMERICAN. The U.S. government made it possible for white Americans in the 1930s and the 1940s to inch their way into the middle class status of the 1950s that was not the case with how this government treated black Americans during that time period.66 of 69 people found the following review helpful. A Worthy Successor to Black Wealth/White WealthBy Fred McGheeMake no mistake about it. The snide comment by Washington Post reviewer Michael Hout above indicates a fundamental inability to comprehend what Shapiro is saying. Why would Hout choose to write this in his review?:"Families and generations are at the core of Shapiro's analysis. So I was surprised that he did not directly address how marriage and family structure fit into the cycles of accumulation; inheritance and investment. Married couples accumulate more wealth than single parents do; according to other researchers. That suggests to me that African-American family issues must play a role in the wealth gap."Hout obviously is attempting to make a point about the high rate of single parent families within Black America; and is implying that if only Black women chose to marry the fathers of their babies that they would not suffer many of the consequences Shapiro lays out in his book. There is but one problem: Shapiro addresses this lame-ass "culture of poverty" nonsense repeatedly in his book; and convincingly shows that even if Black marriage rates were equal to white rates that African-Americans would STILL have less wealth; educational opportunities; and transformative assets. Moreover; Shapiro does a good job of pointing out the motivations behind WHY whites like Mr. Houst consistenly resort to the same trite culturalist arguments of Black pathology when confronted with the troubling facts: they can't bring themselves to admit that their white privilege was constructed and is maintained at the expense of people of color; especially Blacks; because it shatters their deep-seated need to believe that they "earned" everything that they have instead of having been bequeathed it as a result of generations of racial prejudice and institutional racism.Perhaps the sublety of Mr. Shapiro's argument was a tad too much for Mr. Houst and his editors at the Washington Post.If anything; Shapiro's argument can be argued from a left perspective to be an insufficient "liberal" formulation that refuses to engage and critique the structural inequalities of capitalism head-on; substituting a Ford Foundation-esque "asset accumulation" prescription for maladies that require far more radical measures. As authors such as Manning Marable have noted for years; much of American capitalism was structurally DESIGNED to UNDERDEVELOP Black America and continues to operate in this fashion. Thus arguing that Blacks simply need "more" wealth in order to achieve racial parity overlooks many sociological and anthropological insights about race developed over the past thirty years; as well as many Marxian insights about race that have been floating around for years as well.Still; even as a half-measure; this is a highly enlightening and challenging read. It is sure to make many white families uncomfortable because they will probably see themselves in much of what Shapiro writes. Which is the point.
