Challenging the civil rights establishment : profiles of a new black vanguard /

This defense and promotion of African American conservative thought is a helpful summary of the views of Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Robert Woodson, and Glenn Loury. Also mentioned, in abbreviated references, are the ideas of Anne Wortham, William J. Wilson, Robert Teague, Orlando Patterson, Lawrence Mead, and Clint Bolick. Although these black conservatives come from various backgrounds and work toward different objectives, they generally agree on basic concerns. These include: the fundamental significance of values such as hard work, family, honesty, and the acceptance of responsibility for one's actions; the greater importance of human nature over race; the national interest as more important than ethnic affiliation; support for the best in institutions, and especially, in American capitalism; and control, individually and collectively, over one's life. They indict the civil rights establishment that blames everything on racism and thereby excuses African Americans from accepting responsibilites. They reject racial determinism and deny it when expressed by leaders and rap singers. And they are disappointed in whites, particularly liberals, who make the same errors. General; advanced undergraduate; graduate. L. H. Grothaus; Concordia Teachers College

Merely to observe a chronic feature of urban poverty among blacks--the out-of-wedlock birth rate of nearly 80 percent; welfare rolls in the 30 to 70 percent range--stirs a hornet's nest of orthodox indignation. Usually the counterattacker holds in reserve the nuclear charge that the critic is racist. If the critics are blacks, as are the four figures sketched by Conti and Stetson, "Uncle Tom" or "Trojan horse" will do. Three of them are academic intellectuals (Thomas Sowell, Glenn Loury, Shelby Steele), and one (Robert Woodson) is a doer, whose organization inculcates public housing tenants with self-management skills. Together, in their books and public appearances, they have accentuated an empirical approach (as distinct from suspicions that an octopuslike but furtive white conspiracy blocks black progress) in diagnosing the ghetto's privations. The conclusion that social service bureacracies have not vindicated their cure-all claims permeates their dissident views, as does their conviction that without the restoration of the bourgeois values of study, work, and monogamy, the restoration of hope will be left to the treadmill of throw-more-money/affirmative action proposals from this quartet's opponents. Libraries with an activist and open-minded patronage (who serve as local opinion-makers) will see some circulation of this scholarly snapshot of the current situation. ~--Gilbert Taylor

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. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved