A curious feature of the history of thought on race in America is that a strain of bitter alienation became more prominent after the civil rights revolution than it had been before. Sadly, what is often offered as activism today are calls for vast upendings in the workings of American society that give little indication of being realistic, as meanwhile, new generations of struggling blacks are left without constructive guidance. In this talk, I will argue that much of the reason why many black Americans are mired in poverty today is not forms of racism but cultural patterns. Those who suppose that desperate ghetto landscapes are the product of racism assume that eliminating all "institutional racism" and "white privilege" is the solution to our problems. I will address the "racism" orthodoxy in the common consensus on urban sociology and show that increasing evidence points us to truly effective solutions that take on the task of changing cultural patterns and teaching people how to make the best of a competitive and imperfect society.