Endorsements

David L. Beckley, President, Rust College, Holly Springs, Mississippi, writes:

Ken Bedell's Realizing the Civil Rights Dream: Diagnosing and Treating American Racism is a roadmap to understanding racism and its affect and influence on civil rights efforts and policy makers during the 1960s and beyond.

Anuttama Dasa, Director of Communications, International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), writes:

With a lifetime of experience as a scholar, minister, and Department of Education administrator, Ken Bedell is uniquely qualified to shed light on America's divisive crisis of racism. Bedell shows where and why we have failed at home; yet he offers hope and a map for a cultural change. The global upsurge in racism and xenophobia underscores this book's call for alarm, careful thought, and decisive action.

Andrew Sung Park, Professor of Theology and Ethics, United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, writes:

Based on personal stories, historical examples, and social evidence, this book realistically draws a map of how to reach our civil rights dreams in our era of racial pessimism. Lifting up every voice, its message is hopeful, constructive, and exhilarating.

Jackson W. Carroll, PhD, Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Religion and Society, Duke University, writes:

Ken Bedell has written a wise, challenging, and hopeful analysis of race, racism, and the future of American society. Combining personal experience, historical exploration, and perspectives from sociology and social psychology, Bedell argues that American society has moved from a paradigm of unvarnished white supremacy to one that proclaims equality while nevertheless continuing white social and cultural dominance. This white paradigm, as he calls it, stops short of realizing the Civil Rights dream: a 'patchwork quilt' paradigm in which each of the diverse racial, identity, and ethnic groups in American society participates fully in the cultural life of the nation and contributes to the common good. Bedell not only provides an analysis of our past and current racial situation but offers a very helpful road map of practical steps necessary for realizing the Civil Rights dream of a patchwork quilt society.