After Race: Racism After Multiculturalism

Rating:
Summary: Balanced, carefully argued, and elegantly composed.
Review: Perhaps because it is the work of two authors and not one single intellectual ego; perhaps because these authors hail from solid, respectable non-high faluting universities where speaking and writing clearly, convincingly and even elegantly with an eye to the educational currency of one's ideas across several disciplines (rather than only speaking and writing to a provincial, small pseudo-theoretical camp of the like minded); perhaps for all these reasons, this book sparkles with a minimization of jargon and a sharpness of speculative analysis. It's argument for, on the one hand, a rethinking of "race" as a fixed category of socio-cultural identity while also interrogating the continuing existence of racism is hardly new in the early 21st century. Yet, this book may well be the best current humanistic monological presentation of these ideas. In this regard, it provides a welcome antidote to reactionary "end of race" or "end or racism" debates that have arisen among both black progressives and conservatives alike. Well done.