Contemporary Controversies and the American Racial Divide

by Robert C. Smith, Richard Seltzer

Contemporary Controversies and the American Racial Divide is a detailed study of some of the most racially divisive issues America has encountered in the past decade. Smith and Seltzer employ more than forty surveys to explore race-based public opinion differences on high-profile controversies including the Rodney King and O. J. Simpson cases; the arrest, trial, jailing, and subsequent reelection of Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry; the Million Man March and Louis Farrakhan; and the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill controversy. The authors also look at race-based opinion differences on the inner-city crack cocaine epidemic and the spread of AIDS among the American populace.

The divisions in opinion between blacks and whites on these controversies are explained in terms of the distinctive historical and cultural experiences of the different races and the gaps, gulfs, and chasms in their contemporary social and economic conditions. While also noting significant commonalities in opinion across the color line, the book focuses on racial differences and their sources, and in a concluding chapter advances suggestions as to how the nation might overcome its racial divisions. This innovative study is a unique, rich, contextualized, dynamic analysis of race opinion, unlike anything else in literature.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Robert C. Smith, MD, MACP is a University Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry Emeritus at Michigan State University.
His group defined the first evidence-based patient-centered interview, now published as Smith’s Patient-Centered Interviewing: An Evidence-Based Method (McGraw Hill, 4th edition, 2018). They also identified the first evidence-based primary care mental health model, now published as Essentials of Psychiatry in Primary Care: Behavioral Health in the Medical Setting (McGraw Hill, 2019). Educators use both books to teach medical, nursing, and other health care learners in the USA and abroad.
Fed up with medicine’s resistance to improving training in mental health care, Dr. Smith decided to take the problem to the public and wrote Has Medicine Lost Its Mind? (Prometheus Books, 2025). It describes the poor state of mental health care in the US, why medicine ignores it, what needs to be done, and how the public can accomplish this politically.

https://www.robertcsmithmd.com

Reviews

[Donna O · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a well done comprehensive look at the racial differences among African Americans and White (Caucasian) Americans on a variety of issues. The look into opinions of African American leaders was great as was the chapter on conspiracy theories and high profile court cases.