By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended for all concerned with America's future
Review: Anyone interested in race relations -- indeed anyone interested in America -- should read By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race. This is a significant book and I'm thankful I was able to read an advance copy of it. It's well written and every page seems full of insights and ideas. The authors probe deep into our society, puncturing the illusion that we are moving toward an integrated America and forcing us to look deep into our own assumptions about race. This book shows how blacks and whites intersect but never really integrate. It shows how the media sustains an "integration illusion" and how politicians use the integration ideal for their own purposes. It shows how blacks and whites perceive the world differently, and how the black image in the white mind undermines any chance for integration. It also calls for what can only be labeled as radical racial honesty -- and an end to the state of denial that currently governs our racial dialogue. Another point I found fascinating is how we are wrong to lump blacks together with Hispanics and Asians as one large group made of "people of color" -- in truth, as the book shows, Hispanics and Asians are assimilating in ways that blacks have never been able to integrate. By the way, ignore the November 15 Kirkus review posted here. It's obvious that the reviewer didn't read the book and simply took a few items out of context to make the review sound intelligent. I did not even recognize this book from reading that review -- it is a cimplete misrepresentation that missed the whole point of the book. The bottom line is: you will learn from this book and we'll all be better off from reading it. It deserves the attention of all Americans concerned with race relations and the future of their country.

Rating:
Summary: Worse Book On Race Matters
Review: I didn't buy this book from Amazon.com but was a bit stupid and bought it from a regular bookstore. My mistake but really this is not a very good book and to say it's "analytical" is to overlook most of it's major flaws. It's overview of the Civil Rights Movement is too general, excluding in particular Malcolm X who I suppose was just an angry black man and for some crazy reason saw "devils" everywhere. But Dr. King Jr. is mentioned up and down, not as an activist as he truly was but as a humble, pacifist who begged racists to change their ways.

I found this book to kind of an insult considering that there were more African Americans involved in the Civil Rights Movement and that most of us were not passive agents, waiting for Dr. King to have his "dream". The authors should have done a more in depth study instead of this elementary effort.

Rating:
Summary: Remarkable
Review: The best book yet on race relations. A compelling read for any American interested in an honest assessment of the devastating consequences of our nation's arrogance and hypocrisy surrounding racist sentiments and practices.

Rating:
Summary: Focus too narrow
Review: The subject of race provokes more deceit, denial and dishonesty than any other issue in American life. The authors of this book explore the reality-versus-image dichotomy more analytically than any other work I've read. And they're right on the money with respect to affirmative action, which was developed as a counter-weight to racism, and those critics who declare that it gives rise to white resentment. This position is akin to using an experimental treatment for cancer, and then declaring that the treatment CAUSED the cancer. It is well settled that there was white resentment long before the words "affirmative" and "action" were ever used in the same sentence. This book should be required reading at every college in America.

Rating:
Summary: An insightful analysis
Review: This book is a must read for anyone looking to understand race relations in America. It looks at every aspect of race in America -- history, media, culture, politics, how we lead our lives -- and each page offers a level of depth not often found in other books. Little wonder that Dr. Alvin Poussaint called it essential reading on race. The basic premise of the book is that America may be desegregating but we are not integrating -- that our lives may intersect but they do not integrate. The book doesn't deny the progress we've made, but it shows how we remain fundamentally separate in the parts of our lives that involve personal choice -- our neighborhoods, schools, homes and culture. Perhaps most important, the book shows how the basic contradiction of American history -- a nation built on freedom and equality that enslaved and segregated some of its people -- has permeated almost every aspect of our lives. There are lots of insights here: how the increasing integration of media images may hinder real integration; how the black experience is fundamentally different from the experience of other minorities; how politicians use the symbolism of integration for their own purposes; how whites and blacks see the same things differently; how the patterns of racial separation that we see today were becoming apparent before the civil rights movement, meaning that the integration ideal of the Sixties was never really possible. You'll learn about why blacks tolerate Farrakhan; why whites don't like to buy homes owned by blacks, even in predominantly white communities; how neighborhoods turn from all white to mostly black; how you can never trust public opinion polls on race; why blacks and whites seem to be gravitating toward different sports. The book also explores whether we can ever overcome this divide -- and offers an agenda of racial honesty that may be the only way out. And one final thing: the book is beautifully written, easy to read, remarkable for a book packed with so many ideas and insights. This book deserves a lot more publicity. It's one of the most important books you'll read.

Rating:
Summary: Remarkable
Review: this book resonated with me. it articulated and deepened some of my perceptions of the world. it maybe the best book on race i have read.
dan mccaw

Rating:
Summary: wish they weren't right...
Review: This is a book that I read for a while, then put down, read, and put down. I didn't WANT the authors to be right. I was born in the "we shall overcome" '60s, & am still getting over the whiplash from R. Reagan's "anecdotes" about "welfare mothers" (people who gave birth to welfare???) and G. Bush I's disgusting Willie Horton spectacle. It has been a couple of decades & I am still hoping that it is just a blip. But of course it isn't.

But my local paper, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, had this story last week: The report by the African American Men Project found that in 2000:

*About 44 percent of all black men in Hennepin County between the ages of 18 and 30 were arrested and booked into jail during the year.
*49 percent lived in one of Minneapolis' poorest and most unsafe neighborhoods.
*47 percent were being raised by single mothers.
*28 percent finished high school in four years.

The evidence shows that we ARE two countries, separate and unequal. And Diggs-Brown and Steinhorn show that maybe separate and equal are better than what we have now. Their examples of a few settings that are carefully managed to become & stay integrated are enlightening. It can be done, but it sure does take a strong will. The majority of whites, while seeing themselves as decent people, have a poor knowledge of history and don't follow politics. They don't have the will & the commitment to create more integrated communities if the price is higher taxes and constant vigilance.

One thing I was puzzled about, though, was that they did not address what is clearly an increased rate of intermarriage among blacks and whites during the 1990s. How was that happening while housing in general remained dismally segregated?

As to the comment in another review that Latinos & Asians should have been included, I don't agree. This book examines the peculiar, sad story of how African-Americans, as a group, came to be in such a bind in this country. Their story is distinctive and troubling and deserves examination on its own.

I don't want these authors to be right. But I thank them for making me think hard thoughts.

Rating:
Summary: A thoughtful, candid, well-written book about integration
Review: This is a distinctive book about race and, in particular, the failures of integration in the United States. American University communications professors Leonard Steinhorn and Barbara Diggs-Brown document and discuss black-white relations, drawing upon social science scholarship, the media and popular culture, and their own personal experiences. The authors talk about integration and segregation not only in schools and the workplace, but also in worship, leisure, and recreational pursuits. In doing so, they provide a well-rounded but perhaps even more dismal assessment (than others) of the failures of formal, legal efforts to achieve both equality and integration.

Drawing upon their varied professional experiences, they argue that the media has helped to foster an illusion of integration. In particular, they point to the typically diverse casting of on-air television news reporters at the national and local level that suggest an interpersonal racial ease only rarely achieved. The more common view, they argue, is a society where black and white people may work together [if mostly on unequal terms], but then pass each other like ships in the night on the way home to neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly white or black. Their analysis is especially significant for large northeastern and midwestern cities, where black-white relations mostly define the race landscape.

In the end, this book challenges scholars and citizens alike to reflect honestly on our values, our residential choices, and personal practices, not just on rhetoric. Steinhorn and Diggs-Brown show us that a commitment to integration requires hard work and difficult choices, both at the personal and community levels, in ways that national rhetoric about race misses.

Rating:
Summary: A thoughtful, candid, well-written book about integration
Review: This is a distinctive book about race and, in particular, the failures of integration in the United States. American University communications professors Leonard Steinhorn and Barbara Diggs-Brown document and discuss black-white relations, drawing upon social science scholarship, the media and popular culture, and their own personal experiences. The authors talk about integration and segregation not only in schools and the workplace, but also in worship, leisure, and recreational pursuits. In doing so, they provide a well-rounded but perhaps even more dismal assessment (than others) of the failures of formal, legal efforts to achieve both equality and integration.

Drawing upon their varied professional experiences, they argue that the media has helped to foster an illusion of integration. In particular, they point to the typically diverse casting of on-air television news reporters at the national and local level that suggest an interpersonal racial ease only rarely achieved. The more common view, they argue, is a society where black and white people may work together [if mostly on unequal terms], but then pass each other like ships in the night on the way home to neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly white or black. Their analysis is especially significant for large northeastern and midwestern cities, where black-white relations mostly define the race landscape.

In the end, this book challenges scholars and citizens alike to reflect honestly on our values, our residential choices, and personal practices, not just on rhetoric. Steinhorn and Diggs-Brown show us that a commitment to integration requires hard work and difficult choices, both at the personal and community levels, in ways that national rhetoric about race misses.