An American Dilemma

An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, published in 1944, was commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation and conducted by Myrdal with a team of collaborators across five years of research. It remains one of the most comprehensive analyses of racial inequality in the United States ever produced. The study opened with an explicit declaration of values: it would proceed from the premise that the American Creed — the stated commitment to liberty, equality, and individual dignity — was the standard against which American practice would be measured. The central analytical contribution was the demonstration that racial inequality in America was not a transitional imperfection awaiting market-driven correction but a self-reinforcing system in which each disadvantage produced the next.