ABSTRACT
If there is any single problem which raises issues of social responsibility for sociologists it is the problem of race relations. This is not to say that sociologists must take responsibility for the crimes of Belsen or Buchenwald. What it does mean is that they should be able to make clear the kinds of social structures which are involved in race relations situations and the relationship between these structures and the belief systems which support them. This they have signally failed to do. Concerned as they have been, in their own insular way, with the particular practical problems of their own particular countries, they have usually sided earnestly with the liberals and addressed themselves to those petty problems which most disturb the liberal conscience. Only the raucous challenge of Black Power has gradually made it necessary for them to go beyond their restricted ideological standpoints and to bring these ideologies themselves into focus as a central part of their subject matter. Indeed, if a time comes when the problems of race relations recede into the past as no longer matters of significant controversy, a historical retrospect will probably regard the books which were written, and those which were not written, as a good indication of the place occupied by sociologists and other intellectuals in the social structure of racialism.
