Turning Back

Winner of the ASA, Oliver Cox Award for Anti-Racist Scholarship

From the author of The Ethnic Myth comes this cogent analysis of how social science has placed a liberal gloss on racism and failed to champion civil rights. From a powerful critique of Gunnar Myrdal's classic An American Dilemma to a new epilogue that dismantles the myth of black progress, Turning Back offers a challenge to liberals as well as conservatives, blacks as well as whites, who have fueled the current backlash by providing a spurious intellectual cover for gutting affirmative action and other policies designed to advance the cause of racial justice.Compelling. . . . Turning Back is a book that belongs in the hands of any person who believes in civil rights and human justice. We should read it, meditate on it, and reconsider our present conduct in light of its insights. --Texas Observer

"[Steinberg] argues with angry prose and an impressive grasp of the facts about the long list of betrayals of the black people by scholars and activists who proclaim themselves to be the friends of African-Americans. . . . [Turning Back] is strong medicine." --Robert F. Drinan, The Boston Globe

"A very important, rich and thoughtful book." --Adolph Reed, Jr., The Nation

"One of the most important books on race and society to appear in the last decade." --Michael Eric Dyson, author of I May Not Get There with YouStephen Steinberg teaches in the Department of Urban Studies at Queens College and the Ph.D. Program in Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of The Ethnic Myth.