An American Dilemma: A Mystical Approach to the Study of Race Relations

Abstract

These two volumes, An American Dilemma' by Dr. Gunnar Myrdal are perhaps the culminating achievement of classical scholarship on the subject of race relations. They bring to finest expression practically all the vacuous theories of race relations which are acceptable among the liberal intelligentsia and which explain race relations away from the social and economic order. The theories do this in spite of the verbal desire of the author to integrate his problem in the on-going social system. In the end the social system is exculpated, and the burden of the dilemma is poetically left inthe hearts of the American people, the esoteric reaches of which, obviously, may be plumbed only by the guardians of morals in our society. This critical examination, to be sure, is not intended to be a review of An American Dilemma. As a source of information and brilliant interpretation of information on race relations in the United States, it is unsurpassed. We are interested here only in the validity of the meanings which Myrdal derives from the broad movements of his data. The data are continually changing and becoming obsolescent; but if we understand their social determinants we can not only predict change but also influence it.