The New York Times Book Review, Douglas A. Sylva
Many members of minority groups have long argued that society must recognize and accept an individual's racial identity for that individual to enjoy feelings of self-esteem Ironically, however, the very success of this message threatens the black community, since many people traditionally considered black now think of themselves as multiracial or of mixed race.... In
The New Colored People, Jon Michael Spencer takes on the difficult task of explaining, from a civil-rights perspective, why government should refuse to recognize such a category.... [a] thought-provoking, if not always persuasive,book.
From Booklist
Questions for the year 2000 census are already being vetted, and controversy is rising over the request by some multiracial Americans and their parents for a new "block" in its racial classification field. Spencer, an American studies and music professor at the University of Richmond who is himself multiracial, examines the experience of the mixed-race people classified as "coloreds" in South Africa as a basis for urging the U.S. not to add that new choice but to adopt instead a delicate "balancing act . . . a denouncing of race but a dependency on it until the vestiges of racism are obliterated." Spencer traces major arguments in favor of a separate "multiracial" classification and then challenges those arguments by tracing the actual consequences of such an intermediary racial status under apartheid and potential consequences of a similar category in the U.S. Not an essential acquisition but appropriate where issues of racial classification stimulate debate.
Mary Carroll
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