The Color of Our Future: Race in the 21st Century

In her penetrating cross-country tour of the United States, gifted media star-on-the-rise and cultural critic Farai Chideya reveals how America's young people are deconstructing the white/black definition of race and constructing a new pluralistic paradigm that encompasses the country's white, black, Hispanic, Asian, and native peoples. Chideya shows us the trials and triumphs of several young adults who dare to brave the new multicultural world, including Earl, a New York City-born, Spanish-speaking, Chinese/Panamanian/African American college sophomore; Nicole, a biracial 15-year-old Californian; Jaime and Bubba, a persecuted interracial couple in the Deep South whose dead daughter was disinterred from an all-white cemetery because of her bloodlines; Beth, a Washington State blueblood and member of a skinhead organization; and B.J., a high school "wigger"--a white person who adopts black hip-hop culture (hence the derivation from the hated N word). Chideya also scrutinizes affirmative action, mixed-race census categories, and bilingual education with wisdom and accuracy beyond her years. "We do not obey the laws of race. We make them," she writes. "Now is the time for us to chose wisely what we will preserve about our racial and cultural history, and what destructive divisions we need to leave behind." --Eugene Holley Jr.