The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America.(Review)

The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America. By Philip A. Klinker, with Rogers M. Smith (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999) 417 pp. $32.50

Acknowledging that there have been major changes in race relations along the life course of the nation, Klinker and Smith contend that it has been an unsteady march, marked by "two steps forward, one step back." That is hardly a new idea. As Hosea Williams put it on the occasion of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the dramatic events that occurred in Selma, Alabama, on March 5, 1965, "We're not where we used to be but we're not where we ought to be either." What is significant is the explanation that the two political scientists offer for the fact that the course has been marked by short bursts of dramatic reform lasting for a decade …