Liberal Racism - Hardcover

Sleeper, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670873918 ISBN 13: 9780670873913

Publisher: Viking, 1997

Synopsis

With Liberal Racism, political journalist Jim Sleeper offers a devastating indictment of American liberalism's greatest failure: it has turned away from - indeed turned against - the ideal of a color-blind society liberals had fought so hard to achieve. Once the champions of individual opportunity unbounded by race, liberals have embraced the corrosive idea that racial differences should shape over identities and opinions. Such liberal thinking - which its adherents call "diversity" but is better seen as a kind of racism - promotes the color-coding of public policy and civic culture: a dangerous strategy that makes one's skin color one's destiny. Sleeper follows the consequences in the streets, courts, polling booths, and newsrooms, demonstrating that liberal efforts no longer curb discrimination, but invite it. By insisting that racial differences are much more profound than they really are, the new racism constrains Americans increasingly and officially to define their citizenship and their selves - whether they like it or not - foremost by color. Drawing new lessons from black Americans' quest for full citizenship, Sleeper argues that it should now be a point of pride for any American entering a jury room, teaching a class, or reporting a news story to mute his or her racial affinities in order to stand for the whole of American civic culture.

About this title

Review

Sleeper elaborates a compelling alternative to current liberal thinking, one that combines stalwart integrationist principles with a deep concern about the wretched conditions of millions of black Americans.--Sean Wilentz "Slate "

Sleeper doesn't sneer; he argues skillfully and persuasively. And he takes pains to make Liberal Racism a critique of the left, not an endorsement of the right. . . . If he is particularly disappointed in liberals, Sleeper tells us, it is only because he expects more of them in the first place.--Eric Liu "The Washington Post "

Like a Toto in Oz, Jim Sleeper has made his mark lifting the curtain on liberal racism's inconsistencies and hypocrisies. Sleeper's discerning eye details a host of political absurdities, and his lucid prose is a pleasure to read.--Salim Muwakkil "Newsday "

If race is a concept with dubious biological and philosophical foundations, why continue to validate it? Why not argue, as Sleeper has done, for a more nuanced accommodation and celebration of ethnic differences and abandon the theoretical construct race and its destructive corollary, racism?--Mary Lefkowitz "The New York Times "

Sleeper will be called a whiner, a bellyacher, even a racist. Of course, of course. But he is a liberal whose knee does not jerk. He has been examining liberals' rejection of a common American civic culture for several years, but nothing he has written is as candid as what he gives us here. . . . These are words liberals need to hear. They need to hear them because they are true.--Michael Skube "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "

To truly inspire a new dialogue on race, President Clinton will need to push further. Jim Sleeper frames the challenge well: 'Our best leaders are those who show their neighbors, every day, how to leave subgroup loyalties behind at the doors of classrooms, jury rooms, hiring halls. . .' That's far better advice than anything Clinton's advisory panel has offered so far.--Ronald Brownstein "Los Angeles Times "

Jim Sleeper courageously writes abut what can only be whispered in the Academy and in the bowels of bureaucracy: an identity politics that refuses to identify itself.--John Patrick Diggins

Like other writers, Jim Sleeper emphasizes the importance of overcoming a fragmenting culture, but he has a keener sense of the role of market capitalism, as well as liberal ideology. His Liberal Racism is the most intellectually sophisticated of these critiques, the most resistant to ideological formula. It is also the only one that treats race relations as more than a crisis in black and white.--Jackson Lears "Los Angeles Times "

Jim Sleeper has written an important book that deserves to be read and carefully considered, especially if Americans are going to engage fruitfully in that 'national conversation' about race that President Bill Clinton has promised. Sleeper's essays on black identity and what he contends is our lost civic culture are particularly strong, especially the chapter focusing on Harvard Law Prof. Randall Kennedy and Boston University economist Glen Loury, two of the most thoughtful and intriguing black intellectuals in the nation today.--Don Wycliff "Commonweal "

In this short, highly accessible, and often insightful book, Sleeper scores several strong points . . . the liberal left has always been compelled to use race instead of class to bring about social change and has become trapped in this strategy by a combination of genuine puritanical moralism about racism and sheer political opportunism.--Gerald Early, Washington University in St. Louis, editor of Miles Davis and American Culture "Chicago Tribune "

Synopsis

Argues that liberals in the United States have gone from promoting the ideal of a color-blind society to one in which racial identity is minutely defined and accounted for.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0670873918
• ISBN 13: 9780670873913
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208