The End of Racism: Finding Values In An Age Of Technoaffluence

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Simon and Schuster, 1996 M09 30 - 756 páginas
The End of Racism goes beyond familiar polemics to raise fundamental questions that no one else has asked: Is racial prejudice innate, or is it culturally acquired? Is it peculiar to the West, or is it found in all societies? What is the legacy of slavery, and what does America owe blacks as compensation for it? Did the civil rights movement succeed or fail in its attempt to overcome the legacy of segregation and racism? Is there such a thing as rational discrimination? Can persons of color be racist? Is racism really the most serious problem facing black Americans today, or is it a declining phenomenon? If racism had a beginning, shouldn't it be possible to envision its end? In a scrupulous and balanced study, D'Souza shows that racism is a distinctively Western phenomenon, arising at about the time of the first European encounters with non-Western peoples, and he chronicles the political, cultural, and intellectual history of racism as well as the twentieth-century liberal crusade against it. D'Souza proactively traces the limitations of the civil rights movement to its flawed assumptions about the nature of racism. He argues that the American obsession with race is fueled by a civil rights establishment that has a vested interest in perpetuating black dependency, and he concludes that the generation that marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. may be too committed to the paradigm of racial struggle to see the possibility of progress. Perhaps, D'Souza suggests, like the Hebrews who were forced to wander in the desert for 40 years, that generation may have to pass away before their descendants can enter the promised land of freedom and equality. In the meantime, however, many race activists are preaching despair and poisoning the minds of a younger generation which in fact displays far less racial consciousness and bigotry than any other in American history. The End of Racism summons profound historical, moral, and practical arguments against the civil rights orthodoxy which holds that "race matters" and that therefore we have no choice but to institutionalize race as the basis for identity and public policy.

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Contenido

The Collapse of Liberal Hope
1
The Origins of Racism
25
Was Slavery a Racist Institution?
67
The Rise of Liberal Antiracism
115
Who Betrayed Martin Luther King Jr ?
163
How Civil Rights Became a Profession
201
Is America a Racist Society? The Problem of Rational Discrimination
245
Racial Preferences and Their Consequences
289
Is Eurocentrism a Racist Concept? The Search for an African Shakespeare
337
Can African Americans Be Racist?
387
Race and the IQ Debate
431
Pathologies of Black Culture
477
A New Vision for a Multiracial Society
525
Notes
557
Index
701
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DINESH D'SOUZA has had a prominent career as a writer, scholar, public intellectual, and filmmaker. Born in India, D’Souza came to the U.S. as an exchange student at the age of 17 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College. The author of many bestselling books including America, The Big Lie, Death of a Nation, and United States of Socialism, he is also the creator of three of the top ten highest-grossing political documentaries ever made.

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