Cultural Whiplash: The Unforeseen Consequences of America's Crusade Against Racial Discrimination

by Patrick Garry

Book Overview

Law professor Patrick Garry believes today's racial problem is not silence, but rather confusion. Accusations of racism are vague but pervasive. They have become an indictment against the very legitimacy of society as a whole. With that has come a suffocating social guilt, and that sense of guilt has resulted in a steady retreat from moral and value judgments on all cultural matters, not just those of race. Garry addresses racism in America from the...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1581825692
• ISBN13: 9781581825695
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing
• Length: 205 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.4" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A strongly recommended, serious-minded account that does not downplay the evils of racism

Written by research advisor and law professor Patrick M. Carry, J.D, Ph.D., Cultural Whiplash: The Unforeseen Consequences Of America's Crusade Against Racial Discrimination is a harsh scrutiny of modern American culture, particularly in response to its current overemphasis upon the ills of racism and underemphasis upon other social ills including but not limited to crime, drug use, poverty, out-of-wedlock births, corporate greed and theft, and an overall culture of divisiveness and entitlement. Cultural Whiplash is mindful of the past necessity of affirmative action to break color barriers and anti-racism movements to fight discrimination in recent history, yet simultaneously exposes the harm that modern-day overimplication of such practices causes to blacks especially and to society in general. For example, affirmative action guidelines that allow black students to be admitted to academically demanding private schools or colleges they are not prepared to do well in simply predisposes those students to drop out or flunk out of school. New Orleans black leadership clearly failed its population well before Hurricane Katrina, as any examination of pre-Katrina New Orleans poverty and crime rates can attest, yet that same leadership is not held accountable for its own role in the Katrina disaster and aftermath in the way that national government and FEMA leadership is. Fear of accusations of racism curb any societal impulse to condemn rap lyrics that promote violent crime, let alone gang membership or violent crime itself, yet crime causes an enormous and disproportionate burden of cyclical suffering among African-American communities. Cultural Whiplash emphatically argues the need for stronger, more unified moral values as a universal preventative tonic and deterrent to crime, poverty, unemployment, and the exploding divorce and out-of-wedlock birth rates that correlate to all three social ills. A strongly recommended, serious-minded account that does not downplay the evils of racism, but rather sheds light upon all the other societal evils in need of immediate attention that have been severely neglected in favor of tunnel vision upon the evil of racism.

Is there a backlash effect?

Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for Reader Views (1/07) "Instead of elevating the moral character of society, the antidiscrimination mind-set pushes behavioral standards to the lowest common denomination." The civil rights movement accomplished laudable success in America. Racism is deplorable. But has the antidiscrimination movement had a backlash effect? Racism has become a charge bandied around too swiftly. When assistance for the Hurricane Katrina survivors was slow in coming, people shouted racism. When teachers discipline black students we hear the shout of racism. Yet we see African Americans succeeding as never before. "During the civil rights era of the 1960s, racial discrimination was easy to spot." It resided in laws that made it more difficult for minorities to find jobs, vote or to get a college education. Now racism is more understated, almost invisible. Today we have racial perplexity. While racism has not be completely eliminated but there has been great leaps in progress. When it comes to racism whites shout "self-indictment to achieve a semblance of virtue." Today we look at percentages of minorities in the work place, we yell discrimination if the percentage is lower than the percentage of the general populations. "Allegations of racism have become an almost instinctive reaction to legal investigations of minority officeholders." Citizens are so afraid they will be judged racist that they over look "destructive social behavior of its racial minorities." "This is a model that blames high incarceration rates not on criminal behavior but on overly harsh laws." "Because of the power of race, and because of the unquestioned social abhorrence of racism, it has been used to attack an array of cultural values and institutions lying at the heart of the American experience. Race is being used to harm the reputation of American society. This has become a nation that is frightened, unconfident, suspicious and remorseful about everything "from illegal immigration to foreign policy." Patrick Garry does an excellent job discussing racism in today's society. He has an objective attitude and opinion. He expresses it in uncomplicated and straightforward manner. Garry is stating what many of us have believed for a long time. Racism is deplorable but so is what is happening to our society today. We have become a society that is terribly afraid of a lawsuit, of being called a racist so we head the other direction, turning our country over to fear and chaos. Racism will not end until we redefine it. "Men are created equal" is no longer the battle cry of this country now it is "do not sue me." I highly recommend "Cultural Whiplash" to everyone. If we are to save our country we must stop seeing color and begin seeing humans.

An interesting take on the way we deal with racism today actually works against ending it.

One of the standard ploys in our present political climate is to deny the legitimacy of the other side to speak. If you never served in the military you are a chicken hawk if you advocate for a strong and active military. If you aren't a woman you can't speak on things deemed to be woman's issues. If you aren't a minority you cannot speak about race issues in our country. Worse yet, you are often presumptively assumed to be racist. It goes on and on and on and on. The first example of the way our culture has been transformed by this fear to speak clearly and call things by their right names is that I have to first clarify things and say that the author (and I) are clear that racism has existed in America (and everyplace else around the world) and that it is a bad thing. Very bad. And while there are certainly racists (of all colors) living in America today, that isn't the same thing as saying that Jim Crow is alive and well. What has changed is that racism has to be found in many new and unlikely places. As the author notes in the chapter on "The Fog of Racism" we now have subconscious racism, subtle and covert racism, neoracism, metaracism, process racism, malignant and benign racism, cultural racism, enlightened racism, representational racism, institutional racism, and more. I don't know, but doesn't this all sound more like the work of academics and lawyers straining for fees than something along the lines of what galvanized the country in the early 1960s? This book addresses the way race has become such a taboo for whites to discuss that when confronted at work or anywhere in the public square there is a profound unwillingness to stand up to the accusations that the debate has become profoundly one sided. There are some signs of life such as the affirmative action ban based on gender and race for public employment and awarding public contracts here in Michigan that passed 58% to 52%. However, the debate for this amendment is instructive. The environment for public debate was so poisonous that every candidate for public office felt it important to be against this amendment. One group of its opponents formed an organization called By Any Means Necessary and felt the right to misrepresent the facts of the case and to try legal manipulations that were questionable at best. They were hoping for a judge, any judge, to overstep his or her legal authority and side with them and not allow the people to vote the amendment up or down. The judges rightly sided with the people regardless of their personal views, thankfully. Polls on this amendment predicted that the voting would be very close. It wasn't. Why? Could it be that people feel so threatened by this issue that they can't even tell a pollster their true thoughts? Or is it that the polls were phony? I don't know. But we didn't have an open and honest and free discussion on this matter. Affirmative action based on factors such as income or educational opportunity is s