Strange Career and the Need for a Second Reconstruction of the History of Race Relations

This paper sketches broad trends in the history of American race relations in works published since 1955, as well as general trends in actual race relations since that year, in an attempt to understand what forces have shaped those two trends and to propose a Woodwardian reorientation of the field. After Strange Career, race relations history wandered for a time down a too-narrow path. More recently, it has unfortunately veered off course, concentrating on racial identity, rather than racial interaction; on violence, rather than vital statistics; on personal, rather than public politics. Too many historians, in this field and others, have succumbed to the fin-de-siècle temptations of romanticism and intellectual despair, awarding everyone agency and denying anyone domination, and doubting the possibility of knowledge, while seemingly smug in the assurance that they alone possess the truth. In contrast to Woodward’s emphasis on conflict and the possibility of change, many historians, often professed devotees of the political left, have ignored or dismissed distinctions between historical actors, promulgating an image of consensus in race relations that can only hamper effective action against discrimination. Placing themselves outside the fray, historians in general, except those on the political right, have largely retreated from efforts to change the minds that shape the institutional rules of racial interaction. Some have voiced a despair about human nature so profound, and a conviction of the irrationality and unpredictability of human beings so deep as to paralyze efforts at racial or any other type of reform. Woodward initiated the field of comparative reconstruction. It is now time for a second reconstruction of the field of race relations history