If the conservative view of the American race problem is frightening, the traditional liberal view seems impotent. Analyzing the race problem from neither right nor left, Brooks sheds a new and clarifying light on America's longest running social and moral dilemma.br br This incisive book provides a bold new examination of the seemingly intractable racial problems confronting Americans at the end of the twentieth century. In a wide-ranging and probing study, Brooks calls into question the prevailing wisdom about racism, civil rights legislation, and the composition of the Black community, going on to offer a dramatic new approach to the race problem. In Brooks' mind, civil rights laws--laws targeted at racial discrimination--have not only failed to engender racial equality, but have in fact had a negative effect on the standard of living of many Blacks. Brooks defines the American race problem so as to carefully separate racial oppression from economic class oppression and explains how