Whose fault is Ferguson? The roots of our national discord

Event Details

Part of the American Forum special series, What Now? Dialogues on Race in America

National Book Award winner Orlando Patterson, one of the nation’s leading sociologists, takes on a long-running debate over the causes of economic distress for inner-city America. Is it centuries of racism and discrimination against African Americans? Is it a failure of government policy since the Civil Rights movement? Or as New York magazine recently asked: does the real problem lie in “what black communities are doing to themselves”?  In his new book, The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, Patterson seeks to unravel a uniquely American paradox: the socioeconomic crisis, segregation, and social isolation of disadvantaged black youth, on one hand, and their extraordinary integration and prominence in popular culture on the other.