Race Experts

This study looks at how America has capsized racial progress in the quest for self-esteem. Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn uncovers the hidden trajectory and terms of American thinking about race relations since the 1960s. Since the dismantling of segregation, intense anxiety has surrounded interracial encounters and a movement has arisen to engineer social relations through the specification of elaborate codes of conduct. Diversity training in business, multicultural education in schools and cross-cultural psychotherapy have created a world of prescriptions. Lasch-Quinn looks at the teachings of the self-appointed "experts" and offers an analysis of the origins of their ideas. Casting race primarily as an issue of etiquette or therapy, rather than of justice or equality, has had dire consequences for American life, diverting attention from the deeper problems of poverty, violence and continued inequality and discrimination. "Race Experts" illuminates how far away the pundits are from the issues that deserve their attention.