Without Justice for All

by Reed, Adolph L.

• ISBN13: 9780813320502
• ISBN10: 081332050X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-02-01
• Publisher: Westview Pr

Summary

In recent years, America's political and policy leaders have reshaped the nation's approach to race and equality. Our current political orthodoxy has turned away from the long held view that structural forces in our economy, public policies, and history serve to reinforce our nation's inequalities. This new cadre of leaders favors the perception that most inequalities are the results of defects or miscalculations by the minorities or inner city populations most affected. But have these changing notions of race in America served to shape the current patterns and definitions of inequality for better? Or for worse?Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and Our Retreat from Racial Equalityquestions, examines, and explains the way a new orthodoxy of American leaders has contributed to the social stratification and inequality which plagues America today. By looking at the history of our social policies since the New Deal, as well as the status of specific policy arenas, contributors show how political shifts over the past fifty years have moved us away from a more egalitarian politics. Throughout, the central thread is a critical response to a now conventional argument that liberalism must be reconfigured in ways that retreat from immediate identification with the interests of labor, minorities, and the poor. From a look at federal housing policy and the failure of New Deal social programs to an examination of long established public assistance programs and Affirmative Action,Without Justice for All,written for both students and general readers, is timely and important contribution to the dialogue on race in modern America.

Author Biography

Adolph Reed, is a Labor Party organizer and professor of political science at the New School for Social Research in New York. He has previously taught at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	ix
Introduction: The New Liberal Orthodoxy on Race and Inequality	1	(10)
Adolph Reed Jr.
Part 1 The New Orthodoxy on Race and Inequality
Bill Clinton and the Politics of the New Liberalism	11	(18)
Philip A. Klinkner
``Why Can't They Be Like Our Grandparents?'' and Other Racial Fairy Tales	29	(36)
Micaela di Leonardo
The Great Family Fraud of Postwar America	65	(28)
Brett Williams
Part 2 Race, Ideology, and Social Policy: Beneath a Mystified Rhetoric
Race in the American Welfare State: The Ambiguities of ``Universalistic'' Social Policy Since the New Deal	93	(30)
Michael K. Brown
Symbolic Politics and Urban Policies: Why African Americans Got So Little from the Democrats	123	(28)
Dennis R. Judd
Playing by the Rules: Welfare Reform and the New Authoritarian State	151	(24)
Mimi Abramovitz
Ann Withorn
The New Face of Urban Renewal: The Near North Redevelopment Initiative and the Cabrini-Green Neighborhood	175	(40)
Larry Bennett
Adolph Reed Jr.
Part 3 Ideology and Attacks on Antiracist Public Policy
Occupational Apartheid in America: Race, Labor Market Segmentation, and Affirmative Action	215	(20)
Stephen Steinberg
The Voting Rights Movement in Perspective	235	(22)
Alex Willingham
Part 4 A New Black Accommodationism
``Self-Help,'' Black Conservatives, and the Reemergence of Black Privatism	257	(34)
Preston H. Smith
The Crisis of the Black Male: A New Ideology in Black Politics	291	(36)
Willie M. Legette
Part 5 Conclusions
Toward a More Perfect Union: Beyond Old Liberalism and Neoliberalism	327	(26)
Rogers M. Smith
Notes	353	(74)
About the Editor and Contributors	427	(4)
Index	431