Race, Religion, and the Continuing American Dilemma/Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?
Ripley, C. Peter
Ministry or marketplace RACE, RELIGION. AND THE CONTINUING AMERICAN DILEMMA C. Eric Lincoln Hill and Wang, $16.95, 282 pp. CIVIL RIGHTS: RHETORIC OR REALITY? Thomas Sowell William Morrow,...
...Lincoln sees affirmative action as too little, too late...
...But he rejects the idea that flawed policies and programs should be expanded or revised to meet the nation's moral imperative of racial equality...
...Sowell seems to argue that blacks should be left to let the marketplace take its course — the sort of patient waiting Booker T. Washington urged for black America ninety years ago, the results of which Myrdal addressed nearly fifty years later...
...C. Peter Ripley WHEN Swedish scholar Gunnar Myr-dal investigated the American national character on the eve of World War II, he discovered what he described as an American Dilemma...
...that vision has been improperly applied to a succession of groups in America — women, the aged, ethnic minorities — as well as to other nations, including the third world and South Africa...
...The first is that the "civil rights vision" is based on faulty assumptions, particularly when it is applied to non-blacks...
...One is that civil rights has not solved the American Dilemma of race...
...But, out of this set of unique circumstances, there developed a more ambitious set of "general principles," which Sowell defines as the "civil rights vision of the world...
...Establishing a separate black church became a touchstone for the emanicipation experience...
...our cities are laid waste...
...violence is commonplace...
...The black church," writes Lincoln, "seems at its best when it is praising the Lord and 9 August 1985: 445 picketing the devil" — when, as conservator of traditional values, its sense of progress includes administering to both body and soul...
...But for Lincoln, the mainstream white churches are too accommodating of the current culture to offer national salvation...
...we have come to accept it as part of our social fabric, argues Lincoln, because we lack the resolve and leadership to combat it...
...Comparative statistical data are the mainstay of his arguments and conclusions...
...Sowell argues that civil rights failed black Americans...
...The black church has largely escaped the fate of other American institutions because it was created and sustained outside of the American mainstream...
...Sowell and Lincoln share some conclusions with which Myrdal would feel comfortable...
...a church fails, he writes, when it ratifies ' 'the popular sentiments of the moment'' rather than acting as a "conservator of values...
...In the decades following the Civil War, the black church refined a theology suitable to Afro-Americans, provided a focal point for black life, trained ministers who were also secular leaders, and, in the process, became the institutional bedrock of the black community...
...From this thesis, Sowell has three major points to make...
...Sowell established himself as a black spokesman who fits within the imprecise category of new-right intellectual by writing a body of literature that contradicts many of the key assumptions underlying the liberal critique of race relations in America...
...If civil rights did not gather a majority of black Americans into the economic or social mainstream, what, if anything, should be done next...
...They acknowledge that the black middle-class gained from civil rights, and they agree that a majority of black Americans remain economically dispossessed...
...The issue he raises is a critical issue before the nation...
...laissez-faire morality is widely accepted...
...Sowell writes clearly and crisply, cites statistics and data on race and economics from throughout the world to build broadly defined arguments...
...In Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?, Sowell proposes that the civil rights movement in America drew its strength from what was unique in the black American experience — slavery, segregation, and virulent racism...
...Second, the civil rights movement, which began as an effort to provide equality of opportunity to blacks, has now been corrupted into affirmative action, which demands equality of results for many groups including blacks...
...racism thrives — a "cultural malaise" engulfs the nation, and...
...How does America of the 1980s address the questions raised by Myrdal four decades ago...
...As the "focal element of the black experience," the church has often thrived in a "condition of multiform stress...
...Lincoln cautiously proposes that the black church is uniquely qualified to provide a "ministry to America" during these troubled times...
...Lincoln is more ambitious when he moves into the modern era...
...Taking a sweeping approach, Sowell asks data, theories, and historical facts to do work they were not suited to do...
...But the book is troubled...
...Thomas Sowell William Morrow, $11.95, 164 pp...
...Statistics do not tell good history...
...The sort of ministry the nation needs, argues Lincoln...
...They share an implied pessimism about the future yet would not agree on remedies...
...Nor does Sowell...
...The two books under review here take their cue from Myrdal...
...Although civil rights legislation addresses illegal behavior, it has not eradicated racism, which Lincoln describes as one of "a cluster of social and moral problems" that taints our culture: technology is glorified over morality...
...The separate black church owes it existence — at least in part — to the racial attitudes of the historical white church, attitudes that include bolstering slavery ^and practicing segregation and discrimination...
...Commonweal: 446...
...Lincoln proposed that a black ministry to America could be a solution, but he states clearly that it is not in the offing for America to accept salvation from its black minority...
...Lincoln covers familiar historical ground to define one of the ironies of black American life...
...Myrdal acknowledged our enormous accomplishments but reported that American realities did not measure up to American principles — particularly in matters of race...
...Third, the benefits from the civil rights movement have been confined to a small percentage of middle-class black Americans while the black majority has suffered economically since civil rights and affirmative action...
...The idea that the failure of the dominant culture finds a counterweight in the minority culture is a persistent theme of Lincoln's...
...Thomas Sowell comes not from the church but from the economics departments of Harvard and the University of Chicago and the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University...
...Given that historical experience, the church naturally became concerned with ' 'the human condition on both sides of the Jordan...
...but like many economists who discuss public policy or history, he often ignores the complexities of modern life that shaped his data — war, depression, recession, urbanization, migration, industrialization, and changing technology and work patterns...
...Lincoln lends a touch of the conservative Christian when he argues that in a stressful period such as America of the 1980s, people traditionally turn to "the security religion has to offer...
...schools are battlegrounds...
...Sowell sees it as too much altogether...
...Black theologian C. Eric Lincoln examines Myrdal's thesis with a historical assessment of Afro-American religion and its relationship to American churches and society...
Vol. 112 • August 1985 • No. 14
