Mainstream and Margins
Jews, Blacks and Other Americans

This volume of commentaries on racial and ethnic relations is a sociological assessment of a changing society and a personal statement about many of the most pressing racial issues since the 1954 Brown-Supreme court decision. From the perspective of humanistic sociology, Peter Rose shows that sociology need not be a cold, artless science and argues that sociological enterprise should treat future as well as past and present issues.

Roots and Branches: An Introduction; I: The Marginality of a Model Minority; 1: The Ghetto and Beyond: Reflections on Jewish Life in America; 2: Tensions and Trends: American Jews in the 1980s; 3: Country Cousins: Small-Town Jews and Their Neighbors; 4: City Lights: The Children of Small-Town Jews; II: Red, White, Blue—and Black; 5: The Black Experience: Issues and Images; 6: Race and Education in New York: The Challenge Moves North; 7: Social Physics: The Resurgence of Ethnicity; 8: Blacks and Jews: The Strained Alliance; III: On Ethnic Studies and Other Matters; 9: On the Subject of Race: Thinking, Writing, and Teaching about Racial and Ethnic Relations; 10: Problems in Conveying the Meaning of Ethnicity: The Insider/Outsider Debate; 11: It’s Almost 1984: Sociological Perspectives on American Society

Peter I. Rose