Beyond Race

BEYOND RACE is a serious and scholarly non-fiction work about communication, race, and public policy in America, and is designed for the general audience, policy makers, students, and scholars in a variety of disciplines and professions. Its subject matter focuses on America's racial dilemma, drawing from the O. J. Simpson case to the culture gap in America, from the rise and fall of the civil rights movement to the dialogue on reparations; from the increasingly souring black-Latino relations in America to America's new immigrants, from the poverty of national leadership on the question of race to the complexities in building a color-blind society, and from the politics of racial classification to the challenge of spreading American values abroad. BEYOND RACE is both prognostic and restorative.

The cobbling together of individuals from all corners of the globe to build what some scholars have called the "first truly universal nation" has been and continues to be the great American experiment. This unique experiment, which began centuries ago, has had its promises and its challenges. More than two hundred years after the founding of our nation, key questions remain. Why does race continue to matter in our public discourse? Why do Americans show a certain discomfort with each other when talking about race? Why do blacks and whites hold differing perceptions on every major issue? Is racism in America essentially a white problem? Can minority groups be racists? Is treating everyone the same the best way to be fair? Is being color-blind the very best approach to building a new vision of community in America? What does it mean to be a truly universal nation? How do we move our nation beyond race? This book reflects a commitment to addressing these questions and to dealing with one of the central challenges of our time: racial and ethnic inclusion in a changing global and knowledge-based economy.