Prescription for Failure: Race Relations in the Age of Social Science (studies in Social Philosophy and Policy)

As racial tensions ravage America's inner cities, Byron M. Roth argues that the time has come to reassess our public policies on race and rethink the flawed theories that underlie them. In this pathbreaking book, Roth examines the sources of racial conflict and attempts to discover why advances in civil rights for blacks over the past thirty years have not been accompanied by greater harmony between blacks and whites. Roth's central thesis is that America's policies on race have failed because they have been based on social science theories unsupported by sound evidence. He contends that many of the policies initiated in the 1960s were founded on the premise that discrimination was the greatest barrier to black advancement. This premise, Roth argues, no longer reflects reality, as white attitudes toward blacks have unproved and the black middle class has grown. According to Roth, social scientists have failed to communicate to the policy-making community that policies aimed at diminishing white racism can have only a negligible effect on the massive problems of the black underclass. Prescription for Failure touches on a wide range of issues, including the role of the media in perpetuating common misunderstandings about race, the reluctance of social scientists to report on controversial findings that might be construed as insensitive or racist, and the trend on university campuses toward self-segregation among minority students. Written hi a style accessible to the general reader, Roth's book poses a serious challenge to the status quo. It will be of significant interest to political scientists, policymakers, sociologists, and scholars interested hi the study of race.