| 50-5902 | E185 | 2012-35165 CIP | | Social & Behavioral Sciences Sociology | | Reinventing race, reinventing racism, ed. by John J. Betancur and Cedric Herring. Brill, 2013. 399p bibl indexes afp (Studies in critical social sciences, v. 50); ISBN 9789004227507, $179.95. Reviewed in 2013jun CHOICE. | | A group of advisers to the US president concluded that the racial divide in the country has clear origins. In their words, “White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” These conclusions, published as the Kerner Report, were delivered in 1968 to Lyndon Johnson. To mark the 40th anniversary of this report, these conference papers address how the economic downturn of the late 2000s in the context of the continued legacy of colonization has affected immigrant, Latina/o, Muslim, and African American families. The book is disruptive and refreshing, giving readers the particular and occasionally peculiar reading of the subject by editors whose expertise does not necessarily reflect the consensus of the field. The wide selection of topics–from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the tangle of race, poverty, and disability–is a truer reflection of the topic than found in sanitized textbooks. Attention to organized political resistance to structural sources of oppression lights up chapters so that readers gain understanding not just of what shapes people’s social locations, but of what people do to shape the structures that influence their lives. There is much to learn from this ambitious, revealing collection. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. — I. Ken, George Washington University |
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