Ronald W. Walters dislikes the direction that race relations have taken in the present-day United States. In his book, he portrays race relations as a war between the radical conservative wing of the Republican Party and blacks. It goes without saying which group has been losing. It is a story told quite starkly with few nuances or nagging caveats—as the title suggests. The reader feels immediately the depth of Walters's anguish, and the strength of his argument builds as he lays out example after example.

Stated simply, Walters contends that a white nationalist movement began to develop among political conservatives in the late 1960s at the close of the Civil Rights era and gathered steam particularly during the 1980s and 1990s. Fostered by the economic and political progress of blacks that seemed to threaten white dominance and by the economic stagnation that plagued the white middle and lower classes, the movement sought deliberately to disadvantage the “offending culture” (p. 22)—that is, blacks—in an effort to reassert white control.

But Walters is interested not only in outlining this shift in political ideology; he is as interested in describing the practical effects that the resulting policy racism has had upon black life and opportunities. Thus, the book falls quite naturally into two parts. In the first part, he lays the theoretical foundation for his discussion of white nationalism, describes its tenets and historical antecedents, and focuses on the arguments of its leading proponents, epitomized by Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and author of the 1994 Contract with America. Since whites are in control of societal institutions, they do not need to acknowledge the racist motives underlying public policies. This fact presents an evidentiary challenge to the author's argument. The only way to establish racist intent is to show how policies that have been justified in more general terms actually harm the targeted group. Thus, in the second part of the book, Walters lays out case after case in support of his position. The titles of the chapters reveal both the scope of his discussion and the racial animus that, according to him, undergirds national policies. There is a chapter titled “The Attack on the Black Poor,” another called “The War on Blacks: Criminalizing a Race,” and yet another, “Attacking Black Access to Education.” To my knowledge, no other African American scholar has supported the underlying premise with so much careful and devastating detail.

Walters does establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that various public policies across a diverse set of issues have negatively affected the lives of African Americans, particularly poor African Americans. However, the proposition that “race has been a central determinant” in shaping these policies (p. 271) should be treated with some skepticism. Although he comes down solidly on the side of race in the scholarly debate that pits race against class in explaining discrimination and prejudice, he has not convincingly demonstrated the viability of this position. He has not shown that the policies promoted by the radical conservative wing of the Republican Party disadvantage blacks more than they disadvantage lower- and middle-class whites. To many observers, the policies implemented by recent Republican administrations, the current one in particular, have been decidedly class based, aligning the rich against the poor and the middle classes. For Walters, however, the only underlying contributor is race. Had he outlined the arguments for each side in this debate and squarely faced the implications of each, his focus on race alone would have been more defensible. However, comparing the impact of public policies on whites as well as blacks would have required empirical data to measure the size of the impact on each race and taken the book in a totally different direction.

Just as he does not discuss the race/class debate, Walters does not refer to a set of theoretical propositions that seem to fit very well the evidence he has amassed. Social dominance theory asserts that a majority group in a society, when threatened by a subordinate group, will seek to maintain its control by implementing policies that have detrimental consequences for this minority. The dominant group members do not act because they are individually consumed by anti-black feeling but because their overall group well-being is at stake. The theory also usually portrays the opposing groups as monoliths, that is, all blacks against all whites. Yet the author's examples suggest that there are distinctions within the groups. Not all conservatives are white nationalists, in his view, and presumably neither are any Democrats, since he hardly ever mentions them. By tying the desire for social dominance to party affiliation and thus implicating only certain segments within the majority group, Walters could have viewed his efforts as a refinement of social dominance theory. Regrettably, he does not do so.

In a nod to theory, Walters briefly points out in the final chapter that current research in political science relates ideology to the formulation of public policy. Popular opinion, on the other hand, has not accepted the view that racist ideology leads to discriminatory public policies. Walters sees this book as strong support for the existence of such a relationship.

Whether intentionally or not, because Walters never acknowledges it, White Nationalism, Black Interests turns on its head the argument, advanced particularly by Paul Sniderman and his colleagues, that conservatism and anti-black attitudes and behavior stem from two separate and distinct sets of ideas. Even though his analysis is not as rigorous as it could be, Walters shows that the two are indeed related, and his evidence makes it clear that the Sniderman position needs considerable modification. For anyone who is interested in documenting how many of the policies passed in the last 20 or so years have detrimentally affected blacks, this book will be of immense value.