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The Citizenship Debates: A Reader

Amazon Price: $21.15 List Price: $23.50 Usually ships in 7 to 11 days By: University of Minnesota Press Amazon Marketplace: 14 new & used starting at $15.63

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Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?

Thomas Sowell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Thomas Sowell, Exposer of False Dichotomies 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

If you will get one message from this book, it will be that there is no dichotomy between the innate inferiority of a group X and socially-institutionalized discrimination against group X to explain the statistical disparities between the achievements of members of X and individuals who are not included in X. If this dichotomy were true, then this would mean that the American public school system is blatantly biased in favor of students of Asian descent, as this minority group outperforms students of non-Asian descent to a statistically significant degree. However, the allegation of pro-Asian discrimination in this respect is ludicrous. Unfortunately, as Thomas Sowell so eloquently argues, the aforementioned false dichotomy forms the basis for much of the anti-discrimination legislation in existence today.

Thomas Sowell refutes many of the claims that are used to justify ongoing anti-discrimination laws. For example, the claim that statistical disparities in income and academic achievement imply that current society is still inherently (and possibly subconsciously) biased against blacks. However, Sowell argues that this cannot be true, as the fact that there are no statistically significant disparities between blacks from the West Indies and non-blacks serves as a counterexample.

Another claim refuted by Sowell is that institutionalized discrimination against a minority group prevents that minority group from obtaining a high standard of living. Although this claim might be true depending on the level of institutionalized discrimination, Sowell provides counterexamples to this as well, as the Han Chinese are heavily legally discriminated against in Malaysia and yet they disproportionately enjoy a higher standard of living in that region.

Sowell also challenges the claim that government programs that are designed to help a minority group, such as Affirmative Action, actually help that group. For example, instead, Sowell argues, by lowering admission standards for members of certain minority groups, universities merely ensure that these groups remain below their peers.

There are plenty more examples of the above nature in this book.

What explains these differences if not innate inferiority or institutionalized racism? Sowell argues that volitionally embraced cultural values explains these differences. Some cultures are almost entirely confined within a certain race. For example, redneck culture is considered entirely a white phenomenon.

Fortunately, since individuals have free will, if an individual wishes to be successful then they merely need to embrace values such as diligence, ambition and perseverance and eschew values that are antagonistic to such ends.

Editorial Review:

It is now more than three decades since the historic Supreme Court decision on desegregation, Brown v. Board of Education. Thomas Sowell takes a tough, factual look at what has actually happened over these decades -- as distinguished from the hopes with which they began or the rhetoric with which they continue, Who has gained and who has lost? Which of the assumptions behind the civil rights revolution have stood the test of time and which have proven to be mistaken or even catastrophic to those who were supposed to be helped?

Brother to a Dragonfly

Will D. Campbell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

poignant reflections by renegade christian 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

If you were raised in the south as I was, have an interest in the civil rights movement, or want to enjoy one of the most irreverent Christian curmudgeons ever to irritate the church, then read Will Campbell (b. 1924). Campbell was born and raised in the rural and very poor deep south of Amite, Mississippi, "ordained" by family members at a local Baptist church when he was seventeen, and, in a delightfully improbable life, played a central role as an activist and agitator on behalf of African Americans. But to leave it at that would badly misrepresent him.

After World War II Campbell studied at Tulane, Wake Forest, and Yale. He served as Director of Religious life at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), but left after two years because his controversial views attracted death threats. He then did a stint for the National Council of Churches where he worked with most of the civil rights luminaries. In 1957, Campbell was one of four people who escorted the nine black students who integrated Little Rock's Central High School; and he was the only white person to attend the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. So, how did he come to sip whiskey with the KKK and get hate mail from the left?

Campbell came to distrust all movements and institutions, especially the church (he once referred to television preachers as liars, frauds, and "electronic soul molesters"). He dismissed all politics as impotent. It was less than Christian, he realized, to agitate for the oppressed but to hate the oppressor. No, one could not preach what Luther called a "fictitious grace." God loves the redneck Klansmen as well as the disinherited blacks. For the most part, Brother to a Dragonfly tells the story of Campbell's deep love for his brother Joe, and how the latter's tragic demise to alcohol, drugs, and domestic violence led to his premature death. But it was through Joe and an overtly pagan family friend that Campbell had a conversion later in life. Without realizing it, he recalls, his twenty years of ministry had become one of "liberal sophistication. An attempted negation of Jesus, of human engineering, of riding the coattails of Caesar, of playing on his ballpark, by his rules and with his ball, of looking to government to make and verify and authenticate our morality, of worshipping at the shrine of enlightenment and academia, of making an idol of the Supreme Court, a theology of law and order and of not only denying the Faith I professed to hold but my history and my people--the Thomas Colemans [who murdered two civil rights workers]. Loved. And if loved, forgiven. And if forgiven, reconciled." There was all the difference in the world, he realized, between being a "doctrinaire social activist," however laudable, and a follower of Jesus. The key? "I came to understand the nature of tragedy. And one who understands the nature of tragedy can never take sides."

Christian renegade, preacher, author of twenty books and plays, farmer, country musician, friend of Thomas Merton, and agent provocateur, Will Campbell loves a good chew of tobacco and will strike many as enigmatic. Not everyone will appreciate his rapier wit. But PBS profiled him in their documentary "God's Will," in 2000 President Clinton honored him with a National Endowment for the Humanities medal, and Brother to a Dragonfly won numerous literary awards.

Editorial Review:

Will Campbell's award-winning book shares two interrelated stories. One is of his youth in rural Mississippi and his devotion to his brother, whose life ended in seeming tragedy. The other tells of his ordination at age seventeen and his gradual realization that civil rights -- for blacks, for women, for gays -- were an essential part of a ministry that has not yet ended.

Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views (Garland Reference Library of Social Science)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Very useful 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is a great book for a student who is looking for an overview of genocides from around the world. It is a good first step in holocaust and genocide education.

Editorial Review:

A summary of the major atrocities of the 20th century, which looks at the historical context of genocides, and how they were perpetrated. Eyewitness accounts form the basis of the reports which range from the Khmer Rouge massacre of Cambodians, to the annihilation of the Hutu in Burundi.

Martin Luther King Jr. (Rookie Biographies)

Wil Mara

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Martin Luther King, Jr. 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I bought this to use in my 6th grade reading classroom. It is excellent to use to teach reading skills such as main idea, author's purpose, or summarizing. I put it in a center and students have 10 minutes to use the book for an assignment. Since it is at a lower reading level, students have success in building skills to use in higher level texts.

This book is a good addition to the grade 1-6 classroom library.

Editorial Review:

An easy-to-read biography about Martin Luther King, Jr. and how his efforts to stop racism affected society.

Rosa Parks

Douglas Brinkley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent, inspirational telling of an American Icon's story 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Douglas Brinkley brings out the essence of Rosa Parks' humanity and her role in the Civil Rights movement. This short, highly-readable book provides useful background on Mrs. Parks' parents, early childhood, and introduction to the NAACP.

The impact of Rosa Parks' actions on her family and friends was among the most revealing aspects of the book. The web of support, before and after her refusal to give up her seat, is truly inspirational.

The author explores in detail the involvement of Mrs. Parks in the NAACP, church groups, and other activist organizations during the early-to-mid '50s. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s first national exposure in the movement is interesting for those not having read "Parting the Water..." and other such works.

Douglas Brinkley's telling of the Rosa Parks story is not the first - and certainly not the last - but is the best!

Editorial Review:

Fifty years after she made history by refusing to give up her seat on a bus, Rosa Parks at last gets the major biography she deserves. The eminent historian Douglas Brinkley follows this thoughtful and devout woman from her childhood in Jim Crow Alabama through her early involvement in the NAACP to her epochal moment of courage and her afterlife as a beloved (and resented) icon of the civil rights movement. Well researched and written with sympathy and keen insight, the result is a moving, revelatory portrait of an American heroine and her tumultuous times.

In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s

Clayborne Carson

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

With its radical ideology and effective tactics, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was the cutting edge of the civil rights movement during the 1960s. This sympathetic yet even-handed book records for the first time the complete story of SNCC's evolution, of its successes and its difficulties in the ongoing struggle to end white repression.

At its birth, SNCC was composed of black college students who shared an ideology of moral radicalism. This ideology, with its emphasis on nonviolence, challenged Southern segregation. SNCC students were the earliest civil rights fighters of the Second Reconstruction. They conducted sit-ins at lunch counters, spearheaded the freedom rides, and organized voter registration, which shook white complacency and awakened black political consciousness. In the process, Carson shows, SNCC changed from a group that endorsed white middle-class values to one that questioned the basic assumptions of liberal ideology and raised the fist for black power. Indeed, SNCC's radical and penetrating analysis of the American power structure reached beyond the black community to help spark wider social protests of the 1960s, such as the anti-Vietnam War movement.

Carson's history of SNCC goes behind the scene to determine why the group's ideological evolution was accompanied by bitter power struggles within the organization. Using interviews, transcripts of meetings, unpublished position papers, and recently released FBI documents, he reveals how a radical group is subject to enormous, often divisive pressures as it fights the difficult battle for social change.

Four Essays on Liberty

Isaiah Berlin

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Serious Vision 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Agreed. Berlin's book is not the easiest in the world to read. But, then again, neither is Plato, or John Locke, or even Mill for that matter. He writes in a 19th century style, but one which, I think is beautiful and elegant. This is not a book to be devoured, but to be savored. Each word is carefully crafted. To me, Berlin is like diving into a pool of the english language, and just floating in ideas and language. And the ideas are wonderful. More than any other political philosopher, Berlin has diagnosed the problems, and the dangers, of modern social and political thinking. When he argues that those who advocate limits on liberty, in the name of justice, or equality, or another ideal, are in fact diminishing the amount of liberty in society as a whole it is hard not to agree with him. His analysis of the problems of modern philosophy and political thought is as acute. These are the ideas that I now find most compelling in this book. The essay of the two types of liberty is wonderful, as is the one on Historical Inevitability. But it is the essay on Political Ideas in the 20th Century that has become my favorite over the year, for the simple reason that he was incredibly prophetic. In the 19th century, Berlin argues, conservatives and liberal, even socialists, despite their differences agreed on the fundamental questions of politics; who should rule? What is the basis of authority? Why should I obey? What are the obligations and responsibilities of citizenship? In the 20th century, we no longer even consider the questions to be important, or relevant. All political problems have been reduced to either technical matters, of social or economic engineering, or are treated as psychological disorders, that need theraputic treatment. We accept the lost of liberty because we no longer think of it as important, as a question that needs solving. Problems like poverty, or equality, or a cleaner environment, which are suseptible of technical solutions. Anyone who worried about liberty in the face of all of these problems was, ipso facto, crazy, and a refusal to face reality. Hence, prozac or lithium is the prescribed course of treatment, to remove the source, or at least the feeling, of discontent. It is time to take another look at Berlin, not merely as a defender of liberty, but as an analyst of modern political and social thinking, and the dead ends to which it is leading us.

Editorial Review:

The four essays are `Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century'; `Historical Inevitability', which the Economist described as `a magnificent assertion of the reality of human freedom, of the role of free choice in history'; `Two Concepts of Liberty', a ringing manifesto for pluralism and individual freedom; and `John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life'. There is also a long and masterly introduction written specially for this collection, in which the author replies to his critics. This book is intended for students from undergraduate level upwards studying philosopohy, history, politics. Admirers of Isaiah Berlin's writings.

Four Essays on Liberty

Isaiah Berlin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Serious Vision 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Agreed. Berlin's book is not the easiest in the world to read. But, then again, neither is Plato, or John Locke, or even Mill for that matter. He writes in a 19th century style, but one which, I think is beautiful and elegant. This is not a book to be devoured, but to be savored. Each word is carefully crafted. To me, Berlin is like diving into a pool of the english language, and just floating in ideas and language. And the ideas are wonderful. More than any other political philosopher, Berlin has diagnosed the problems, and the dangers, of modern social and political thinking. When he argues that those who advocate limits on liberty, in the name of justice, or equality, or another ideal, are in fact diminishing the amount of liberty in society as a whole it is hard not to agree with him. His analysis of the problems of modern philosophy and political thought is as acute. These are the ideas that I now find most compelling in this book. The essay of the two types of liberty is wonderful, as is the one on Historical Inevitability. But it is the essay on Political Ideas in the 20th Century that has become my favorite over the year, for the simple reason that he was incredibly prophetic. In the 19th century, Berlin argues, conservatives and liberal, even socialists, despite their differences agreed on the fundamental questions of politics; who should rule? What is the basis of authority? Why should I obey? What are the obligations and responsibilities of citizenship? In the 20th century, we no longer even consider the questions to be important, or relevant. All political problems have been reduced to either technical matters, of social or economic engineering, or are treated as psychological disorders, that need theraputic treatment. We accept the lost of liberty because we no longer think of it as important, as a question that needs solving. Problems like poverty, or equality, or a cleaner environment, which are suseptible of technical solutions. Anyone who worried about liberty in the face of all of these problems was, ipso facto, crazy, and a refusal to face reality. Hence, prozac or lithium is the prescribed course of treatment, to remove the source, or at least the feeling, of discontent. It is time to take another look at Berlin, not merely as a defender of liberty, but as an analyst of modern political and social thinking, and the dead ends to which it is leading us.

Editorial Review:

The four essays are `Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century'; `Historical Inevitability', which the Economist described as `a magnificent assertion of the reality of human freedom, of the role of free choice in history'; `Two Concepts of Liberty', a ringing manifesto for pluralism and individual freedom; and `John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life'. There is also a long and masterly introduction written specially for this collection, in which the author replies to his critics. This book is intended for students from undergraduate level upwards studying philosopohy, history, politics. Admirers of Isaiah Berlin's writings.