Customer Reviews

Understanding Race and Ethnic Relations (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dr. Parrillo's prior works have been excellent; this book is a perfect fit for a class I developed, and teach, at UNLV: Racial and Ethnic Groups of the United States. With its concise sociological construction, its thoughtful analaysis of the powers of prejudice, and its exploration of dominant-minority relations in millennial America, it makes excellent and informative reading for my students.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is teaching sociology or anthropology classes on racial and ethnic relations as one of the textbooks to use in class. This book introduces students to a wide variety of concepts and theoretical orientations that are or have been prominent in the sociology of racial inequality over the past 50 - 100 years, such as Park's race relations cycle, Gordon's assimilation theory, Hansen's three generation hypothesis, and Moynihan's "culture of poverty" paradigm.

Unlike most other textbooks that deal with this subject matter, Parrillo does not organize chapters around particular racial/ethnic groups. Instead, chapters are organized by thematic concepts, such as prejudice, discrimination, and the future of ethnicity in the United States. Parrillo incorporates a tremendous diversity of theoretical frameworks and sociological concepts throughout the text - the most important being the "Dillingham Flaw" (intentionally making a flawed comparison, based on past phenomena that no longer exist or have changed considerably).

This book is perfect for teaching freshman-level race courses at universities. Students often enter these classes with averse, angry attitudes and hostile outlooks. In the first chapter, Parrillo actually discusses this problem, pointing out why intellectual conversations on race that aim for rational analysis of data and empiricism are difficult for students. Students often have trouble keeping their own emotions in check and have difficulty looking at things "outside the box" - a necessary endeavor for quality social science analysis. This is the only book I know of that speaks to and addresses the emotional reactions people usually get when discussing race.

My favorite part of the book is Chapter 2, especially the section on "Theories of Minority Integration" where the author discusses different ideologies a society may employ regarding ethnic diversity (assimilation, amalgamation, or pluralism). His discussion of a multitude of different and conflicting social and psychological theories regarding the origins of prejudice and discrimination are also top notch.

There is nothing negative I can say about this book. It is extremely informative, written in a plain-English prose, and should have trouble in grabbing and retaining the reader's interest.

I was in an interesting situation in my fall term of college classes. I ended up with three different courses which all, in one way or another, were looking into issues of race and ethnicity. One of them was explicitly on the topic of Race & Ethnicity, and that course chose this book as their textbook. This was a twelve week long course.

My first impression when beginning the book was that it was VERY short. It's a small format paperback, with small pages, and there are only 185 pages of content. That includes all the end-of-chapter summaries too. Reading a chapter went by very quickly, and it felt as if the topic at hand was only skimmed. There was so much more that could have been investigated in each topic area. Much more detail could have been provided. Just as one example, illustrative situations could have been provided both from cultures currently in action and from historical situations.

Maybe this is meant for a quick-read course that only lasts four weeks? Maybe it's meant as just one of many books to help broach the subject, and the student reads this first in a few weeks then goes on to more specialized books to get the real impact? I'm just not sure. I do know that compared with the other books I was reading at the same time for my other classes that this one felt quite light.

Certainly it is not that I felt that the information contained in here was *inaccurate* or unhelpful in any way. The author does provide valid information. However, sometimes it borders on silly, with how basic it is. Did you know that people who have prejudicial feelings can either act on them or not act on them? Or that some people feel prejudice in certain situations, while others may not feel prejudice in those same situations?

I did also note with interest that while most college textbooks present the material and allow the student to draw his or her own conclusions, this book was fairly heavy handed at times in pushing the student to feel and react in a certain manner. I'm not sure that I feel that is appropriate for a textbook to do.

I'll give the book four stars for being a good start, but it definitely loses a star for not being thorough enough in covering the material at hand. This is a critical topic to cover very well, and I get a sense that students who only read this will be missing out on a lot. Especially given what my other two classes covered, when they weren't even focused wholly on this topic.

I used this book for Anth/Socl 214, US Racial and Ethnic Minorities. I must say, it's one of the most repetitive short books I have read to date. It is more of a pamphlet than a book, really, but provides a decent overview of sociological theories about race and ethnicity in America. It provides a good starting point for research but is not in-depth, as I was hoping to read more about the treatment of ethnic minorities like American Indians in the United States, but the book focused more on black-white relations. As a textbook, it served its purpose, but if you are interested in reading about race relations in an in-depth or ethnographic way, I would recommend a book like Country of Strangers by David Shipler, or This Land Was Theirs by Oswalt.

This book is exactly what it claims to be. It's a well-researched, information-dense textbook. It's easier to read than most, but makes no effort to disguise what it is.

That's why the three stars; when compared to a great "book", it falls far short. When compared to other textbooks, though, this one performs well. If you're looking for an overview textbook for race and minority relations, this is a good one. If you're looking for a non-fiction "book" aimed at the general populace to read of an evening, this may not be for you.

This product was shipped to me immediately. Once I recieved this book, i was glad it was in just as good of condition as the seller stated it would be!