Faded Dreams: The Politics And Economics Of Race In America

Faded Dreams paints a new picture of why racial inequality changes in America - one that challenges existing explanations by putting politics at center stage. The author argues that blacks began to catch up economically with whites mainly when government policy makers, under political pressure by blacks and backed by an important segment of the white community, pushed for greater economic equality. Similarly, the greatest obstacles to black gains in other periods have been government policies. Policy makers usually assumed away the race problem or used it against blacks and whites for political purposes, legitimating existing inequality and often making it worse. Through a systematic analysis of fifty years of data on income, education, and the kinds of jobs blacks and whites hold, Faded Dreams makes a powerful case that it takes active government to undo wage and job discrimination and to improve the education and living conditions of disadvantaged black youth.

Faded Dreams paints a new and challenging picture of how racial inequality has evolved in America. Martin Carnoy shows that three dominant views of economic differences between blacks and whites--that blacks are individually responsible for not taking advantage of market opportunities, that the world economy has changed in ways that puts blacks at a tremendous disadvantage compared to whites, and that pervasive racism is holding blacks down--do not adequately explain why blacks made such large gains in the past and stopped making them in the 1980s and 1990s. Using a systematic analysis of fifty years of data on income, education, and the variety of jobs that both blacks and whites have held, Faded Dreams offers a powerful argument for active government intervention to improve the education and living conditions of disadvantaged black children.