Title: Turning back
First published: 1995
Description: Turning Back traces social science writing on race relations over the past half-century. Beginning with Gunnar Myrdal's classic, An American Dilemma, Stephen Steinberg shows how mainstream social science placed a liberal gloss on racism and failed to champion civil rights. Not until the racial crisis of the 1960s was there a willingness to confront racism "in all of its hideous fullness," and to place responsibility for the nation's racial problems on major political and economic institutions.

During the post-Civil Rights era the focus of blame has again shifted away from societal institutions onto blacks themselves. Turning Back is a trenchant critique of this "scholarship of backlash." Steinberg challenges liberals as well as conservatives, blacks as well as whites, who have fueled the backlash and provided a spurious intellectual cover for gutting affirmative action and other policies designed to alleviate racial inequalities.
Subjects: Affirmative action programs, Government policy, Race discrimination, Race relations, United States, Positieve actie, African Continental Ancestry Group, Rassenpolitik, Civil Rights, Public Policy, Social Justice, Trends, Sociale politiek, Rassenverhoudingen, Social conditions, Minorities, African Americans, Ethnic relations, Social classes, United states, race relations, Minorités, Conditions sociales, Noirs américains, Classes sociales, Relations interethniques, Relations raciales, Nationale Minderheit, Rassenkonflikt, Soziale Klasse
Places: United States