My review will be brief, as I have already written a rather lengthy review of the text as a comment under the 1-star review by The Wolf.
Buy this book if you are curious how we process those who are different than us, notably by race. Essay by essay, the authors argue persuasively that humans have no control over whether or not they notice race. Our bodies - from our brains, down our spine and into our nervous systems, through our bloodstream and to our hearts - respond differently to people who differ visibly from us. This has been shown by fMRI and EEG readings of amygdala activity (the part of the brain related to stress and fear, among other things), as well as hormone release (cortisol, a fright or flight hormone, is released both when prejudiced people are forced to interact with people of another race, and to people of another race when they are being antagonized). We have this amygdala activity and hormone release to protect us. For hundreds of thousands of years, we needed to be very defensive and alert. This programme was essential to survival. But today, in structured societies of humans whom science has declared all equal, this programme is obsolete. Much like our irrational fear of spiders and Mad Cow disease (you are much more likely to die in a car, but cars weren't around 150,000 years ago and food pandemics and deadly insects were), our inclination to "other" people unlike us is an unfortunate part of our design feature that is here to stay.
The good news: people who are less prejudiced (due to multicultural studies, growing up with people of different races, learning in science and civics that all people are the equal, etc) have smaller amygdala and cortisol responses, and thus it appears possible to regulate and reduce this natural tendency to negatively judge others. But in order to beat it, we have to recognize that we do it. And we objectively do it, as the science shows. What sociology, law, political science, ethnic studies, and logic show is that our inborn inclination to "other" has created a society of others, marginalized based on our irrational fears. A "colorblind" approach keeps the marginalized where they are. A multicultural approach, in which we actively recognize our color differences and their consequences, is the only path to an equal society.
Note: The editors' introduction to Part III reads: "the Roman emperor Augustus converted to Christianity" (pg 100). This obviously never happened. Augustus died in AD 14. The first Christian emperor of Rome was Constantine, 300 years later, and Christianity eventually became the state religion of Rome in 391 AD, under Theodosius I. There's absolutely no excuse for publishing such absurdity in a book - it would be unacceptable even on a blog - but this book is so rich in empirical data that the emperor data can be let slide.
