Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era

This is the first book to assess in a systematic and theoretically informed way the course and status of racism in the post-civil rights era. It convincingly demonstrates that racism continues to exist in contemporary American society twenty-five years after the civil rights revolution. Smith clarifies the concept of racism through a historical analysis of the doctrine and practice of white supremacy. Then, drawing on a variety of data--surveys, court cases, the academic literature, government and privately collected statistical reports and studies, and personal experiences--Smith traces the present-day manifestations of racism ideologically, attitudinally, behaviorally, and institutionally. The final chapter presents a detailed critique of the literature on the black underclass and of William Julius Wilson's thesis on the declining significance of racism in explaining the underclass. In the process, it presents a persuasive argument that the persistence and growth of the underclass is itself major evidence of the prevalence of racism today.