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Lillian Rubin's book, Families on the Fault Line, goes directly to the experience of everyday people and shows how the connection between economic decline and racial tension is continuously reinvented in America. She interviewed 162 families in all, mostly white, ....

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.... families seek to place the blame for their problems on ethnic minorities--an attitude, she claims, that has been fostered by national administrations as a way of deflecting anger about the state of the economy and the declining quality of urban life. Rubin warns that failure to recognize the suffering of the working-class family and to seek solutions for its problems jeopardize ``the very life of the nation itself”. The most striking part of this book is the evidence of the political machine that practically invites racism and other divisive forces into the situation. Families on the Fault Line contributes to a broader understanding of t ....