The Ordeal Of Integration: Progress And Resentment In America's ""Racial"" Crisis

by Orlando Patterson

Examines American misperceptions about race, and discusses social and political strategies for addressing the challenges of integration

Genres: Race, Social, Sociology

248 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University; the author of Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and Slavery and Social Death; and the editor of The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, for which he was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. His work has been honored by the American Sociological Association and the American Political Science Association, among others, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as Special Advisor for Social Policy and Development to Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley and was awarded the Order of Distinction by the Government of Jamaica.

Reviews

[Elyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not going to attempt to summarize the in-depth essays about the challenges of integration that comprise this excellent book. What I will say is that Orlando Patterson presents some compelling ideas drawn from philospohy, sociology, political economy, and statistical studies.

What sets this book apart is that Patterson transcends the typical rhetoric I have encountered in other books about integration, beginning with his use of different terminology to talk about this subject. He also veers into ideas that seem conservative, as well as highly radical concepts. He has liberated himself from rigid belief systems and chosen instead to review the facts and present new theories.

In the end, I experienced a significant paradigm shift in my own thinking. Best of all, in the last chapter, he outlines some detailed strategies to overcome the ordeal of integration.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was written in the 90s, so it may be quite dated in the post-Obama and post-Trump era. However, Patterson makes interesting observations on the paradoxes of America's troubled legacy of integration. I admire his defense of affirmative action more than his assertion of equivalence between the right wing's genetic determinism and the left wing's "socioeconomic" determinism.

[Ejcarter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Orlando Patterson is a very smart man, and like his other writings this is filled with trenchant apercus and remarkable even-handedness. However it is much less compelling than Rituals of Blood, the second volume in what was to have been a trilogy (volume three has yet to appear). The Ordeal of Integration packs too much into its 200 pages and doesn't quite reach the devastatingly brilliant heights of Rituals of Blood.

[Izlinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dense. It was a struggle to read it and I didn't read all of it for class. The conclusion was quite repetitive. I did find the chapter on affirmative action interesting, though.

[Jonathan]

None

[Aimee Wilson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Major holes in argument.