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In 1899 the great African American scholar, W.E.B. DuBois,
published The Philadelphia Negro, the first systematic case study
of an African American community and one of the foundations of
American sociology. DuBois prophesied that the color line would be
the problem of the twentieth century. One hundred years later,
Problem of the Centuryreflects upon his prophecy, exploring the
ways in which the color line is still visible in the labor market,
the housing market, education, family structure, and many other
aspects of life at the turn of a new century. The book opens with a
theoretical discussion of the way racial identity is constructed
and institutionalized. When the government classifies races and
confers group rights upon them, is it subtly reenforcing damaging
racial divisions, or redressing the group privileges that whites
monopolized for so long? The book also delineates the social
dynamics that underpin racial inequality. The contributors explore
the causes and consequences of high rates of mortality and low
rates of marriage in black communities, as well as the way race
affects a person's chances of economic success. African Americans
may soon lose their historical position as America's majority
minority, and the book also examines how race plays out in the
sometimes fractious relations between blacks and immigrants. The
final part of the book shows how the color line manifests itself at
work and in schools. Contributors find racial issues at play on
both ends of the occupational ladder among absentee fathers paying
child support from their meager earnings and among black executives
prospering in the corporate world. In the schools, the book
explores how race defines a student's peer group and how peer
pressure affects a student's grades. Problem of the Century draws
upon the distinguished faculty of sociologists at the University of
Pennsylvania, where DuBois conducted his research for The
Philadelphia Negro. The contributors combine a scrupulous
commitment to empirical inquiry with an eclectic openness to
different methods and approaches. Problem of the Century blends
ethnographies and surveys, statistics and content analyses, census
data and historical records, to provide a far-reaching examination
of racial inequality in all its contemporary manifestations."
Focusing on three central factors-the physical environment, social
relations at the micro level, and social organization at the macro
level-Professor Massey argues that humans are genetically
programmed to be physiologically, psychologically, and socially
adapted to life in small groups and to organic natural
environments. Despite this, most humans live in dense urban
environments. "As biological organisms," Massey writes, "we are
indeed strangers in a strange land." Strangers in a Strange Land is
part of the Contemporary Societies series.
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