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THE COMPLEXITY OF RACIAL ATTITUDES: Continuing Progress or the Calm Before the Storm?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2004

Vincent L. Hutchings
Vincent L. Hutchings
Affiliation:
Political Science Department, University of Michigan
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Extract

Carol M. Swain, The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 526 pages, ISBN 0-521-80886-3, $30.00.

Paul M. Kellstedt, The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 174 pages, ISBN 0-521-82171-1, $60.00.

Carol M. Swain's book, The New White Nationalism in American: Its Challenge to Integration, is an ambitious and, in many ways, novel blend of traditional social science and social advocacy. At the outset, Swain informs the reader that this book breaks with “… the tradition of impersonal, value-free social science insofar as I do not pretend to be neutral and do not hesitate to interject many personal observations and comments into the body of the text.” She does not disappoint on this score. This nearly 500-page book combines original interviews and survey and focus group data, with Swain's reflections on a range of topics including reparations, affirmative action, racial hate crimes, and the redemptive power of religion. To Swain's credit, she also steps outside her role as a (nominally) dispassionate social scientist to offer a range of policy prescriptions near the end of her book to combat what she views as the potentially alarming growth of the White power movement. In many ways, Swain's passion for her subject is refreshing, and even commendable. Unfortunately, her passion is also the source of the principal weakness of this book: its inability to match its uncompromising rhetoric with persuasive, or even plausible, supportive evidence for readers who do not already agree with her arguments.

Type
STATE OF THE DISCOURSE
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 2004 , pp. 203 - 208
Copyright
© 2004 W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research

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References

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