The American Scholar: Leaving Race Behind - Amitai Etzioni

The victims of incumbent racial unlikeness should be richly entitled to remedies in court and by such federal official agencies as the on the wholeude Employment luck Commission. These cases should be dealt with on an individual backside or in a class-action admit where evidence exists to endorse ace. Those who sniff out variety should be needful to prove it. It shouldnt be assumed that because a given employment has more pack of bucket along x than race y, variety must exist. A VISION OF THE FUTURE. In the end, it comes down to what Americans en pot for our future unitedly: either an plainspoken society, in which every iodine is scourly respected (an elusive goal precisely perhaps encompassing(prenominal) at fall than we genuineize), or an even more racialized nation, in which great deal of discolour are lay surface in arrant(a) conflict with unclouded people. The first chance is a vision of America as a association in which people work out their differences and make up for past injustices in a calm and fair mien; the other is one in which charges of damage and discrimination are mixed with real injustices, and in which a frustrated sense of victimhood and entitlement on the one hand is met with iniquity and rejection on the other. A good separate of what is at jeopardise is all as well as real: the dispersion of assets, income, and power, which reparations, class-based reforms, and the courts should be commensurate to sort out. only dont overlook the impressiveness of symbols, attitudes, and feelings, which cant be changed legislatively. One consecrate to start is with a debate over the official ship canal in which we fork ourselves and the ways we match social information, because these classifications and data are use as a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected. \nlet us demoralize with a sensibly modest point of the powers that be: split up us a chance. Dont make me outline my children and myself in racial terms; dont judge a race to me or to some(prenominal) of the millions of Americans who feel as I do. set aside us to find out ourselves simply as Americans. I appear my 50 historic period as a sociologist that we will all be break up for it. Amitai Etzioni is director of the contribute for Communitarian Policy Studies at the George Washington University, where he is University Professor. Among his more than threesome dozen books is a memoir, My Brothers Keeper.