Books in Brief: The New Racism

The New Racism: Reverse Discrimination in America, by Lionel Lokos (Arlington, 470 pp., $9.95). Condoning in Negroes what it would condemn in whites, a new racism, according to Lokos, has become the trend in America. This new racism has been examined by other writers, most notably Tom Wolfe, but never in the detail and with the supporting evidence present here. It is probably no accident that a very large part of the Lokos case is built on materials from New York. With John Lindsay and Leonard Bernstein in the arena along with James Perkins the target is just too broad to miss. Bernstein, however, seems to have defeated himself. So, too, did Perkins. There is some hope, then, that the Lindsay path will lead to its logical end. That end would be, if Lokos is right, a recognition by all that the new racism is harmful to Negroes and to whites, in the same way that slavery tended to destroy the moral fiber of the owners while denying dignity to the owned. The new racism, built on assumptions about the inferiority of the Negro, is a nearly perfect prescription for the destruction of moral strength and for the denial of dignity. w. d. jacobs