Black and African-American Studies: American Dilemma, the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy"In this landmark effort to understand African American people in the New World, Gunnar Myrdal provides deep insight into the contradictions of American democracy as well as a study of a people within a people. The title of the book, An American Dilemma, refers to the moral contradiction of a nation torn between allegiance to its highest ideals and awareness of the base realities of racial discrimination. The touchstone of this classic is the jarring discrepancy between the American creed of respect for the inalienable rights to freedom, justice, and opportunity for all and the pervasive violations of the dignity of blacks. The appendices are a gold mine of information, theory, and methodology. Indeed, two of the appendices were issued as a separate work given their importance for systematic theory in social research. The new introduction by Sissela Bok offers a remarkably intimate yet rigorously objective appraisal of Myrdal--a social scientist who wanted to see himself as an analytic intellectual, yet had an unbending desire to bring about change. An American Dilemma is testimonial to the man as well as the ideas he espoused. When it first appeared An American Dilemma was called "the most penetrating and important book on contemporary American civilization" by Robert S. Lynd; "One of the best political commentaries on American life that has ever been written" in The American Political Science Review; and a book with "a novelty and a courage seldom found in American discussions either of our total society or of the part which the Negro plays in it" in The American Sociological Review. It is a foundation work for all those concerned with the history and current status of race relations in the United States."--Provided by publisher. |
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actually American Creed American Negro Association attitude become Black caste Census cent Chapter Chicago cities Civil colored courts crime culture economic equality etiquette fact federal feel Franklin Frazier Hortense Powdermaker Ibid important individual industry interest interracial James Weldon Johnson Johnson labor leadership less lynching movement Negro church Negro community Negro education Negro leaders Negro masses Negro press Negro problem Negro protest Negro schools Negro upper Negro workers Negro world Negroes and whites North Northern observed opinion organizations pattern police political practical race prejudice race relations racial Ray Stannard Baker rural Section segregation segregation and discrimination situation slavery slaves social equality social science society South Southern Negro Southern whites status tion tradition U.S. Bureau unions United upper class Negroes Urban usually valuations value premises W. E. B. Du Bois wage Washington white Americans whites and Negroes York