This Week's Suggested Book from the Ashbrook Center (Monday, April 06, 1998)
 | | One Nation Indivisible: How Ethnic Separatism Threatens America
by J. Harvie Wilkinson, III |
Addison Wesley 256 pages, January 1997 Hardcover, 24.00 ISBN: 0201180723
A percentage of the proceeds from your purchase of this book from Amazon.com will benefit the Ashbrook Center.
One Nation Indivisible is a warning about the future of America: If we continue to pursue policies of racial separation, our children and grandchildren may no longer be citizens of one great and united land.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson warns that we are courting racial and ethnic separation at the very moment we should be seeking unity. Both majorities and minorities are adopting separatist practices, and even our courts endorse separatist principles at the expense of equal treatment under the law. For Wilkinson, these policies are chilling echoes of the rigid division he recalls from growing up in a segregated state. Rather than unite us, even well-intended separatism solidifies racial barriers and guarantees our country a future of ethnic life.
Wilkinson praises the multiculturalism of New America, criticizing those who assail immigration or belittle the contributions of minorities. But he laments the dangers of affirmative action based on racial goals and the pitfalls of education that does not help immigrants acculturate. He uses his own run for Congress to show how voting districts drawn on racial lines marginalize minorities. Rejecting the notion of an Inaccessible Racial Experience, he warns that speech codes based on that idea prevent us from even discussing our problems.
Table of Contents
- Preface
- 1. The Medley of America
- 2. Making the Medley Work
- 3. The Integrative Ideal
- 4. The Specter of Separatism
- 5. Separatist Politics
- 6. Separatist Entitlements
- 7. Separatist Education
- 8. Separatist Speech
- 9. The Future of New America
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Index
- About the Author
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