Reading about race

Since yesterday's post was devoted to fun summer reading and fiction, I thought I'd focus today's post on some more meaty material--books about race and anti-racism.

I confess that this post is really inspired by the one at Anti-Racist Parent "If I Was in Charge of Revising MEPA: Some Books for White People Adopting Black Children." Lots of folks ended up writing in their own recommendations in the comment section.

So here are my own "Must Reads" for anyone interested in good books that cover issues of race and racism and anti-racist work. Some of them are theoretically dense, others are really a collection of excerpts from longer works. But all are really good at tackling issues of race.

*Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. Michael Omi & Howard Winant. Second edition. New York & London: Routledge (1994).
--I was assigned the first edition of this work as a freshman at UCSB taking my very first Asian American studies class. It is required reading in any class I teach on race. There is supposed to be a third "Millennium" edition coming out, but the second, like the first, is solid work--especially Chapter 4 on "Racial Formation."

*"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity. Beverly Daniel Tatum. Revised edition. New York: Basic Books (2003).
--A great book for anyone who has ever asked this question or been asked this question (or its variation) for why kids cluster along ethnic/racial lines (with the questioner sometimes implying that there is something wrong with this). Beverly Tatum is the current president at Spelman College and is an amazing scholar and speaker. And this book is foundational reading on child development and race in America. In many ways, it complements Omi & Winant by literally fleshing out the theory that they propose by looking at the actual adolescents and young adults going through the process of racial formation.

*White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism. Paula S. Rothenberg, editor. Second edition. New York: Worth Publishers (2005).
--This is a great collection of essays on white privilege. And any discussion of race and racism should also be a discussion of white privilege. The list of contributors reads like a "Who's Who" of race reading and writing: bell hoooks, George Lipsitz, Tim Wise, and many others. One of my favorite essays is by Peggy McIntosh "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" (it's in Part III). In fact, the collection is dedicated to her as one "who led the way."

*We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity. Tommie Shelby. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (2005).
--This is probably the most dense reading in this recommended list, but it's also very thorough in its discussion of the history of black racial identity--its political and philosophical roots linked with the history of the U.S. and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. One of the things Shelby is trying to do is to talk about black identity as a social identity and viable group identity that isn't always commensurate with Black Nationalism. Shelby is careful not to dismiss Black Nationalism, but in the world of postmodernist philosophy and race, the dismantling of any ethnic-national groups is part of the status quo--Shelby is trying to show how group racial identities are still important while also acknowledging the fictive qualities of race and the problematics of relying solely on a Black National identity and political agenda.

*Honky. Dalton Conley. New York: Random House (2000).
--During the fall semester a few years back, I literally had a student in my "Mixed Race America" class chase me across campus and hand me this book. He had heard Conley speak at his high school and had been so impressed and thought that the issues we were discussing in class--ones about racial identity, cross-racial identifications, allies across color lines, class, race, gender, sexuality, and most importantly racism and white privilege, were all encompassed in Conley's autobiography. He was right. I finished the book in a weekend and was sorry that I had discovered it too late to put on my syllabus. Dalton Conley is a social psychologist at NYU, and his autobiography is informed by his social psychologist's eye. But it is also a raw, engaging, entertaining, thoughtful, and thoroughly honest look at race and white privilege through the eyes of a man who grew up the only white kid in a black-Latino housing project in NYC.

*Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation-State. Robert Chang. New York: New York University Press (1999).
--I'd be remiss not to include a work by a legal scholar who works in critical race studies, especially one as good as Chang. At a slim 180 pages (and that includes the footnotes and index) this book is a must-read for anyone who wants to be able to argue for affirmative action, especially because as Chang knows all too well, Asian Americans have been used as that wedge group to argue AGAINST those policies (and I've written about Chang and this issue before). The book, however, isn't only about affirmative action--it's also about the history of Asian Americans in U.S. jurisprudence and the primacy of placing Asian Americans into any discussion of race in the U.S.

Anyway, these are my recommendations for key books on race, racism, white privilege, and anti-racist practices. Feel free to leave your own in the comment section.

I appreciate affirmative action

I am a beneficiary of affirmative action. But perhaps not for the reasons people will immediately jump to. Sure I have personally gained from affirmative action programs as a woman of color, but what I mean is that as a citizen of this nation, as a resident of the United States, I have benefited from a government policy--from a re-orientation of values and priorities--that recognizes the unfair institutional discrimination (what we can loosely label racism and sexism) that had disenfranchised people in American society based on their sex and their race--in the early 1970s when the policy was instituted, it means men of color and women of all races.

For a fairly lucid description of affirmative action, as well as the controversies surrounding it, click on this link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. And for a more in-depth collection of essays and articles about affirmative action, click on this link to "The Affirmative Action and Diversity Project" from UCSB.

There is a lot of confusion about what affirmative action is and who it benefits. And the truth is, it's not perfect--there have been problems in its execution and interpretation. People generally think of affirmative action as a program for "minorities" Yet one of the main beneficiaries of affirmative action policies have been white women. Others point out that Asian Americans have profited over affirmative action programs that were really designed to help enfranchise African American, Latino, and American Indian groups--ones who had faced more systematic racism than Asians in America. Although I would parry by showing that Asian Americans also face racial discrimination, although perhaps it does not look the same as the types of discrimination faced by others, and that their "success" should be qualified since I don't see many Asian Americans in positions of power--in other words, I'm stil banging my head on that glass ceiling. Still others (and this is, I think, what people think about when they think about detractors of affirmative action) believe that it is a system that unfairly promotes unqualified "minorities" over more qualified "whites." And one of the more contested areas is around college admissions.


The above cartoon really sums up Chapter 7 of critical race scholar Robert Chang--I've already promoted his work, and that of Scott Page in the post "Reverse Racism!" so I won't repeat myself here.

I'll just end with an observation: if, as many people believe, that affirmative action isn't needed because we are on an equal playing field--that women and people of color are not facing institutional discrimination or social disenfranchisement, why are we still having a national conversation about whether a white woman or a black man can be "presidential" material? Or perhaps even more prosaic, looking around at the heads of colleges and universities, looking at Congressional representatives and senators, looking at the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and heads of Hollywood movie studios--do we really think that men of color and women of all races are being equitably represented in positions of power?

I said I would stay positive, and since this is the eve of the Chinese New Year, what I will end with is saying that I do, truly, appreciate affirmative action. My life is better because I have been able to live in a society that values diversity, and I am privileged to work in environments that value diversity and that work to end social disparities in gender and race (and class and sexual orientation for that matter). I appreciate affirmative action not because of what I have personally gained from it but because it has made my life richer by allowing me to hope for a more equitable world.

Reverse Racism!

I love this quote from David Roediger (UIUC History Professor):

"We should transform 'reverse racism' from a curse to an injunction (Reverse racism!)."
--in Towards the Abolition of Whiteness (1974)

This quote introduces Chapter 7, "Reverse Racism! Affirmative Action, the Family, and the Dream That Is America" in Robert Chang's Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation State. (Click here for information from NYU Press).

Chang is a critical race theorist and legal scholar at Loyola Law School (in Los Angeles--a lot of alliteration, I know), and his book is really smart for anyone who wants to read more about how Asian Americans fit into critical race theory (which is basically legal theory with a racial orientation/focus). And his chapter on affirmative action is so important because Asian Americans have been set up as this example, this "model minority" for why we don't need affirmative action, and Chang lays out very succinctly and importantly what affirmative action is and who benefits the most from affirmative action (taking into consideration the number of legacies at ivy league colleges and athletes who get into college on special admission policies).

Another scholar in support of affirmative action in particular and diversity in general is Scott E. Page at University of Michigan. There's a great New York Times piece about his work and, most interestingly, the scientific/mathematical model he helped to develop that shows how diversity benefits society, which is the basic premise for his book The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies (Princeton University Press). You can read the article by clicking on this sentence.

For anyone who finds themselves in an argument about affirmative action or why diversity should matter, check out these two scholars. And remember, Reverse Racism!