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 Myrdals 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.