Description
Book Synopsis"Transcending the Color Line", by sociologist and professor Bobby E. Mills, PhD, represents a philosophical attempt to make sense out of American black collective experience. This collection of essays does not reflect traditional sociological perspectives and methodological considerations. Instead, the query is: How do we live? More importantly, what are we willing to sacrifice in order to live the way we say we want to live? In other words, these essays dig deeper to the moral and spiritual issues that lie beneath the more obvious sociological ones.
Invariably the search for moral understanding and spiritual meaning is neither easy nor popular. Yet it is the abstract, empirical (amoral and apolitical) character of traditional sociology that has all but rendered it irrelevant to the resolution of contemporary social ills. The biased theoretical assumptions of the scientific method (i.e., abstract empiricism) are the social basis for the collective bias otherwise known as the illusion of value neutrality. This collective cultural bias is the social foundation for institutional racism, sexism, theological dogmatism (i.e., denominationalism), and above all, authoritarianism. Indeed, every “ism” is a schism, and schisms divide. Our either/or logic fosters cultural extremism rather than a universal perspective on humanity.
By digging deep to the true source of our sociological and leadership issues, these essays not only call black and white individuals accountable to the dysfunction present in our shared social experience, but inspire all people to transcend the color line and become part of the solution.
Table of Contents1. The Sociology of Family: Spirituality Versus Materialism
2. Character Development: Making You Your Best Friend
3. The Proper Use of Money
4. One Educational Process Does Not Fit All
5. The Miseducation of the Black Community
6. What Happened to the War on Poverty
7. Black Personality Structure: An Expression of Racial Oppression
8. A Philosophical Analysis of Black Academia
9. The Difficulty of Effective Community-Wide Planning
10. How to Wreck a University
11. Black Intellectuals: Myth or Reality
12. The Sociology of “Party Down”: Saturday Night Versus Sunday Morning
13. A Socio-Religious Analysis of the Social Costs of Institutional Racism in a Theoretical Democracy
14. White Supremacy: Myth or Reality
15. Affirmative Action: Method or Ideology
16. A Philosophical Analysis of Democracy, Power, Leadership, and Commitment in American Society
17. The Twenty-First-Century Civil War: Upside Down
18. The Decline of American Social Democracy
19. Trayvon Martin: The Aftermath
20. “Stand Your Ground” Is Unholy Ground
21. An Analysis of the Political Party System in America
22. A Philosophical Analysis of Republicanism
23. A Socio-Theological Analysis of Vanity
24. An Analysis of Homosexuality: Social Isolationism
25. Same-Sex Marriage: Civil Right or Human Right
26. The Issue of Sin Is Destroying the Fabric of American Society
27. A Socio-Religious Analysis of the Ecological Crisis: Human Exploitation
28. Ten Things: Bridging the Cultural Racial Divide
