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  • Civil Rights

  • Rhetoric or Reality?
  • By: Thomas Sowell
  • Narrated by: James Bundy
  • Length: 4 hrs and 3 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (1,028 ratings)

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Civil Rights

By: Thomas Sowell
Narrated by: James Bundy
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Publisher's summary

Thomas Sowell takes a tough, factual look at whether the civil rights movement has lived up to its hopes or its rhetoric. In the decades since the historic Supreme Court decision on desegregation, who has gained and who has lost? Which of the assumptions behind the civil rights revolution have stood the test of time, and which have proven to be mistaken or even catastrophic to those who were supposed to be helped?

Armed with vast statistical research, Sowell deftly refutes the key assumptions on which the civil rights movement was erected - "that discrimination leads to poverty and other adverse social consequences and...that adverse statistical disparities imply discrimination." He surgically probes the fundamental racial issues, including affirmative action and busing, as well as women's issues, including the Equal Rights Amendment.

Rights and wrongs: listen to more of our titles about the civil rights movement.
©1984 Thomas Sowell (P)1988 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

"A brutally frank, perceptive, and important contribution to the national debate over the means to achieve equality and social justice for minorities and women." (New York Times)