Liberal Racism

New York: Viking, 1997. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/very good. Nelson Bakerman (Jacket Photograph). 23 cm. [12], 195, [1] pages. Works cited. Index. Typed Letter Signed by the author to Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal laid in. Jim Sleeper is an American author and journalist. Since 1999 he has also been a lecturer in political science at Yale University, where he has taught seminars on American national identity and on journalism, liberalism, and democracy. He writes primarily on American political culture, racial politics, news, media and higher education. In the 1990s he wrote two books about racial politics, The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York and Liberal Racism. From 1993 through 1995 he was a political columnist for the New York Daily News and an occasional contributor to The New York Times and to The Nation, The New Republic, and other political magazines. From 1988 to 1993, he was an opinion editor and editorial writer for New York Newsday. He has written most recently for The Huffington Post on the Obama Administration, Occupy Wall Street, Yale University's venture to establish an undergraduate college in collaboration with Singapore, and gun control in the United States. Sleeper is also member of the editorial board of the journal Dissent. Derived from a Kirkus review: Anyone who can resist the temptation to dismiss this book as another conservative-in-liberal's-clothing attack on the legacy of the civil rights movement will find it disturbing and well worth reading. Veteran journalist Sleeper argues that liberals have shifted from the goal of a race-blind society to a ``racialist'' mindset that segments society along racial lines. Sleeper is not an apologist for past and present racism. He condemns liberals who have lost sight of the importance of individualism and universal values, yet sets himself apart from conservative critics by recognizing the reality of discrimination and genuinely seeking a society in which race does not matter. This places him directly at odds with proponents of identity politics. Although Sleeper proceeds in a journalistic style by introducing us to a series of people, throughout he tends to lump ``liberals'' into a bloc and attack them as one. This seems to be an arbitrary grouping that Sleeper objects to when the commonality is race. Nevertheless, anyone with the courage to address such a loaded issue and to raise uncomfortable but undeniable concerns in an honest manner must be applauded.