Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era - Now You See It, Now You Don't (Hardcover, New)

"...Smith examines the expression of the centuries-old framework of white supremacy in contemporary white attitudes, individual white racist actions, institutional patterns of societal racism, and black responses to racism. He provides an outright refutation of the notion, omnipresent in scholarly and journalistic writing over the last decade, of a 'declining significance of race' in the United States". -- Joe R. Feagin, Graduate Research Professor, University of Florida

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.