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Reaching beyond Race
If white Americans could reveal what they really think about race, without the risk of appearing racist, what would they say? In this elegantly written and innovative book, Paul Sniderman and Edward Carmines illuminate aspects of white Americans' thinking about the politics of race previously hidden from sight. And in a thoughtful follow-up analysis, they point the way toward public policies that could gain wide support and reduce the gap between black and white Americans.
Their discoveries will surprise pollsters and policymakers alike. The authors show that prejudice, although by no means gone, has lost its power to dominate the political thinking of white Americans. Concentrating on the new race-conscious agenda, they introduce a method of hidden measurement which reveals that liberals are just as angry over affirmative action as conservatives and that racial prejudice, while more common among conservatives, is more powerful in shaping the political thinking of liberals. They also find that the good will many whites express for blacks is not feigned but represents a genuine regard for blacks, which they will stand by even when given a perfectly acceptable excuse to respond negatively to blacks.
More crucially, Sniderman and Carmines show that the current impasse over race can be overcome if we remember what we once knew. The strongest arguments in behalf of equality for black Americans reach beyond race to the moral principles that give the issue of race itself a moral claim on us.
Their discoveries will surprise pollsters and policymakers alike. The authors show that prejudice, although by no means gone, has lost its power to dominate the political thinking of white Americans. Concentrating on the new race-conscious agenda, they introduce a method of hidden measurement which reveals that liberals are just as angry over affirmative action as conservatives and that racial prejudice, while more common among conservatives, is more powerful in shaping the political thinking of liberals. They also find that the good will many whites express for blacks is not feigned but represents a genuine regard for blacks, which they will stand by even when given a perfectly acceptable excuse to respond negatively to blacks.
More crucially, Sniderman and Carmines show that the current impasse over race can be overcome if we remember what we once knew. The strongest arguments in behalf of equality for black Americans reach beyond race to the moral principles that give the issue of race itself a moral claim on us.
208 pages, Paperback
First published September 25, 1997
6 people want to read
About the author
Paul M. Sniderman
24 books2 followersPaul Sniderman is a professor of political science at Stanford University (Stanford, CA), and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
http://politicalscience.stanford.edu/...
http://politicalscience.stanford.edu/...
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July 7, 2016I read a lot of academic literature on American politics; some of it recent, some not-so-recent. So to the extent I'm establishing a GoodReads "presence," new rule: If a book was written by a living political scientist (or academic), I'm not going to give it a star rating. I'm much more concerned with logging the academic stuff I read, and proving to myself that it's possible to specialize in an academic discipline while maintaining a vibrant reading life outside that discipline. I also don't want to use GoodReads to take strong stances on the methodological and substantive debates happening within political science. It's not that kind of forum.
But it still makes sense to describe and briefly talk about whatever I'm reading. Reaching Beyond Race represents the kind of political science research that non-PoliSci audiences can and should be reading (it's accessible, and it affects their lives). The book was one of several late-1990s PoliSci works to make a pivotal argument: opposition to race-conscious policies (affirmative action in particular) is largely grounded in race-neutral values, not the overt or even covert prejudices often assumed to be responsible. Most importantly (and completely forgotten by people that criticize this research without reading it), the argument for "color-blind" policy proposals is forwarded not as a conservative antidote to the excesses of civil rights. Rather, the authors see "color-blind" policies as a means of strengthening white support for liberalism traditionally understood - including logical expansions of the social welfare state.
Reaching Beyond Race was also significant for launching a series of (by-now) canonical "types" of survey experiments to tease out covert prejudice despite the realities of social desirability bias. But that's too much inside baseball for GoodReads.
But it still makes sense to describe and briefly talk about whatever I'm reading. Reaching Beyond Race represents the kind of political science research that non-PoliSci audiences can and should be reading (it's accessible, and it affects their lives). The book was one of several late-1990s PoliSci works to make a pivotal argument: opposition to race-conscious policies (affirmative action in particular) is largely grounded in race-neutral values, not the overt or even covert prejudices often assumed to be responsible. Most importantly (and completely forgotten by people that criticize this research without reading it), the argument for "color-blind" policy proposals is forwarded not as a conservative antidote to the excesses of civil rights. Rather, the authors see "color-blind" policies as a means of strengthening white support for liberalism traditionally understood - including logical expansions of the social welfare state.
Reaching Beyond Race was also significant for launching a series of (by-now) canonical "types" of survey experiments to tease out covert prejudice despite the realities of social desirability bias. But that's too much inside baseball for GoodReads.
Displaying 1 of 1 review