Still the Big News: Racial Oppression in America

• Published in: Canadian Journal of Sociology 2003, Vol.28 (1), p.104-106
• Main Author: Hier, Sean P.
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Book Reviews/Comptes rendus; Cultural change; Interethnic relations; Race; Racial discrimination; Racism; Social change; Sociology; U.S.A
• ISSN: 0318-6431; 1710-1123
• DOI: 10.2307/3341878

Part I, 'The Emergence of a Critical Race Theory', presents seven chapters devoted to theoretical matters in the history of American race relations/oppression. The first two chapters in this section offer a basic overview of race-thinking in early twentieth century American social theory. Using as a point of reference the functionalism that permeated intellectual currents such as assimilationist theories and the caste/class models of the 1930s and 1940s, [Bob Blauner] begins to set the context for a critical discussion of colonialism and racial oppression. Glossing over the complexity and diversity of the intellectual currents of the times, the text flows into an exploration of 'the iron law of white privilege' and Blauner's well known views on internal colonialism, developed over Chapters 3, 4 and 5. The first section closes with two chapters on racism, culture and blackness, developing further his polarized conception of colonized and immigrant minority groups. Part II of Blauner's volume seeks to elucidate some of the ways in which institutional racism has functioned in American society. Offering a range of analyses, Blauner begins this section with an experientially-motivated essay concentrating on the Watts riots of 1965. He argues that the rioting is best conceptualized, not in terms of racial tensions between blacks and whites, but as an example of anti-colonial resistance against a colonial white elite. The chapter is supplemented by a discussion focusing on the Huey Newton murder trial of 1968. Extending the colonial analogy, Blauner revisits the case which saw racism structure the jury selection process, public perception and the legal proceedings generally. The section concludes with two further chapters, one developing the structural model to highlight the marginalization and racist barriers Mexican-American faced in the 1970s, the other concentrating on power relations embedded in the very institution of social research.