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"The End of Racism"
Allan Hanson (hanson@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU)
Fri, 13 Oct 1995 09:29:50 -0500
Thanks to Marta Henrikson for forwarding the review of Dinesh D'Souza's
THE END OF RACISM. The book poses an important challenge to anthropology not
only because of its far-out views on the state of racism today, but
because of its claim that the main thing that is now impeding the progress
of African Americans is cultural relativism. Relativism, as set out by
Boas and his students, is in fact the major whipping boy in the book. For
those who might be interested in an
anthropologist's reaction to D'Souza's book and its treatment of
relativism, my essay on "Race and Relativism" will appear in the next
(November/December) issue of TIKKUN, which should come out sometime in
November.
The review that Marta forwarded says that Free Press has found it can
make money with books like THE END OF RACISM and THE BELL CURVE. True
enough, but it seems to me that there is a definite editorial strategy
involved here as well. Once one of the top trade presses for serious
social science, it has now become the major outlet for right-wing
pseudo-social science.
Allan Hanson
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