Cons: authors spend too much time refuting one book
The Bottom Line: Excellent and thoughtful. Whitewashing Race abandons the colorblindness fairy tale and reminds us that we have so much farther to go in resolving racial issues in our country.
deeblackthorne's Full Review: Michael K. Brown ( editor ) - Whitewashing Race: T...
I remember growing up hearing about how, one day, people would stop judging each other by skin color. I also remember watching "The Jetsons" faithfully and thinking how cool it would be to drive in a flying car.
In 2009, overt, classic discrimination may have decreased in some ways, but even to people outside the sociological discipline, racism has taken new shape and form. I read this book before the most recent Presidential Election, but I was flabbergasted nonetheless. Racism took to its original roots: presidential images hung in effigy, fundraising by selling Obama waffles, stuffed monkeys, let alone a shot dead one holding in its hand a bill for re-regulation. "Real America," "our values."
Racism has become reintegrated into xenophobia -- the idea that, on skin color and superficial features alone, let alone political ideologies and values, that we can determine who's "with us" and who's "against us." The Brown, et. al. text seems that much appropriate and prescient considering the political heat generated from Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, the backlash and uproars coming from different sectors on the Right, and the disenchantment and resentment building in the working class.
The authors spend an inordinate amount of time reacting to writers on the Right, particularly the Thernstroms. I haven't read their book No Excuses which rails hard against affirmative action and protected class sensitivity. The gist (at least the points that our authors refute) is that a decline in overt discrimination does not mean that the plight of racism is over. Colorblindness in America is little more than a romantic trope: Stratifications continue to exist in our society.
The authors offer statistical evidence in many different sectors: wage earnings when controlling for experience and education, penalties and rates of incarceration, seeking medical care, housing, crime, education, political representation, voting, and so on. They do this through a mix of presenting survey data, but also running multiple regression models to point out statistical differences. Some readers may find the statistics a bit overwhelming at times; they tend to jump between anecdotal findings, clips of informal survey data, and then charts and figures. It's all good stuff, though, and it drives the point home. Statistical findings show that, at best, racism has just changed in form and appearance. The inequalities have persisted even in the face of some progressive changes.
Readers might also appreciate the tone of the argument as well. Thinking of something I had read in Becker's Tricks of the Trade, sociologists are often afraid to take bold, strong stands in their assertions. When it comes to the culture wars and social and political commentary in general, people get a little brash. When it comes to statistics, however, we couch our findings in all sorts of brevities and hesitations. Not Brown, et. al. Probably because they focus so hard on proving the Thernstroms and a few other conservative commentators wrong, the tone in the book seems very forceful and firm. It translates into researchers exhibiting passion and outrage at inequalities that continue to persist to today.
Whatever one's comfort with statistics, the book appears well-organized and cohesive throughout. I was actually surprised at how quickly I read through Whitewashing Race. Clocking in at a little over 300 pages, it was a speedy and refreshing read that I think would be accessible to a wider population -- politicoes, social scientists, inequality experts, and people generally interested in talking about race altogether.
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