Despite the apparent racial progress reflected in Obama's election, the African American community in the United States is in a deep crisis on many fronts-economic, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual. This book sets out to trace the ideological roots of this crisis. Challenging the conventional historical narrative of race in America, Peller contends that the structure of contemporary racial discourse was set in the confrontation between liberal integrationism and black nationalism during the 1960s and 1970s. Arguing that the ideology of integrationism that emerged was highly conservative,...

Despite the apparent racial progress reflected in Obama's election, the African American community in the United States is in a deep crisis on many fronts-economic, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual. This book sets out to trace the ideological roots of this crisis. Challenging the conventional historical narrative of race in America, Peller contends that the structure of contemporary racial discourse was set in the confrontation between liberal integrationism and black nationalism during the 1960s and 1970s. Arguing that the ideology of integrationism that emerged was highly conservative,...