Race, Class, and Gender in the United States

I would perhaps have given this more stars, under different circumstances. That might seem unfair, but the circumstances in which I read this are probably the same for most readers. As it was for a lot of people, this was a required text in my sociology class. The problem is that it was the only text for the class. As a supplement, sure, it would have been useful, but it's woefully inadequate as a textbook. My complaints are as follows:

I had the 2014 edition (somehow, even though it was only mid 2013) and yet the collected entries were usually published significantly before that. In some articles that makes sense; if you want a first person account of the effects of Jim Crow laws, or Indian boarding schools, by all means find the oldest source you can. However, if your trying to illuminate the injustices of the world today, the best articles for the job certainly did not come out in the 80's. I'm not saying the world isn't equally or even more unjust since then, only that one would have very little clue whether it was by reading this book. Even then, although I can imagine the editor picking older entries specifically because they still apply, I can't help but think that it's more about nostalgia or laziness.

Further, there is an issue with the quantitative aspects of the book. The more qualitative or first-hand, 'how-it-makes-you-feel,' entries are fine. If one hasn't been on the receiving end of racism, or homophobia, etc, then these articles really do help bridge that gap a little. But there are too many of them. If you break it down, the book is three things: personal accounts, meta analyses with circular, jargon-filled explanations that make arbitrary distinctions, and attempts at actual quantitative analysis. This last category is sadly underrepresented, and the few articles that do rely heavily on numbers often contradict each other. Is that a consequence of when the research was done? Different methodologies? Misuse of data? Who knows; the readers will just have to look that up on their own, or more likely, not even notice.

Notice that neither of these complaints would really matter if this was supplementary material. The main textbook would then ideally cover terminology, handling data, following up on sources, identifying bias in the media, etc. In other words, things the reader could apply when perusing these articles.