Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy

Winner of the ASA, Oliver Cox Award for Anti-Racist Scholarship

From the author of The Ethnic Myth comes this cogent analysis of how social science has placed a liberal gloss on racism and failed to champion civil rights. From a powerful critique of Gunnar Myrdal’s classic An American Dilemma to a new epilogue that dismantles the myth of black progress, Turning Back offers a challenge to liberals as well as conservatives, blacks as well as whites, who have fueled the current backlash by providing a spurious intellectual cover for gutting affirmative action and other policies designed to advance the cause of racial justice.