Getting Beyond Race: The Changing American Culture

In a rigorous, jargon-free account that combines history, anthropology, sociology, and psychology with good old-fashioned common sense, political scientist Richard J. Payne defines race as "an arbitrary label ... wrapped in pseudoscientific doctrine to legitimize socioeconomic and political power." He details how race is used by politicians and social scientists to uphold criminal, intellectual, and sexual stereotypes of nonwhites--blacks in particular. Payne also attacks the notion of separate black and white cultures, stating that America is multicultural at its core, with Americans of European and African descent equally contributing to and drawing from the melting pot. At the same time, he's careful to highlight the inherent dangers of multiculturalism's potential fragmentation into ethnic tribalisms.

Although Payne acknowledges that racism is still a major problem in the United States, he attests to much progress against it. He holds up the military as the leading example of successful integration in America, citing its many black leaders, including Gen. Colin Powell, and speaks well of the successes of pop icons Michael Jordan, Bill Cosby, and Oprah Winfrey in changing cultural perceptions of blacks. Payne also astutely notes that increased immigration by Asians, West Indians, Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics to the U.S. continues to undermine the artificial, bilateral, black-white racial paradigm.

Payne's pragmatic, "bottom-up" approach to healing race relations relies on reframing the racial question in terms of culture, rejecting stances of victimhood, encouraging more mixed-race marriages (while abandoning the "one-drop" rules that have traditionally defined blackness for Americans), and undertaking policies of class-based affirmative action that, Payne believes, would "promote cooperative behavior across racial groups and help the country move closer toward getting beyond race." --Eugene Holley Jr.