A Country of Strangers
Blacks and Whites in America
-
- $4.99
-
- $4.99
Publisher Description
A Country of Strangers is a magnificent exploration of the psychological landscape where blacks and whites meet. To tell the story in human rather than abstract terms, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David K. Shipler bypasses both extremists and celebrities and takes us among ordinary Americans as they encounter one another across racial lines.
We learn how blacks and whites see each other, how they interpret each other's behavior, and how certain damaging images and assumptions seep into the actions of even the most unbiased. We penetrate into dimensions of stereotyping and discrimination that are usually invisible, and discover the unseen prejudices and privileges of white Americans, and what black Americans make of them.
We explore the competing impulses of integration and separation: the reference points by which the races navigate as they venture out and then withdraw; the biculturalism that many blacks perfect as they move back and forth between the white and black worlds, and the homesickness some blacks feel for the comfort of all-black separateness. There are portrayals of interracial families and their multiracial children--expert guides through the clashes created by racial blending in America. We see how whites and blacks each carry the burden of our history.
Black-white stereotypes are dissected: the physical bodies that we see, the mental qualities we imagine, the moral character we attribute to others and to ourselves, the violence we fear, the power we seek or are loath to relinquish.
The book makes clear that we have the ability to shape our racial landscape--to reconstruct, even if not perfectly, the texture of our relationships. There is an assessment of the complexity confronting blacks and whites alike as they struggle to recognize and define the racial motivations that may or may not be present in a thought, a word, a deed. The book does not prescribe, but it documents the silences that prevail, the listening that doesn't happen, the conversations that don't take place. It looks at relations between minorities, including blacks and Jews, and blacks and Koreans. It explores the human dimensions of affirmative action, the intricate contacts and misunderstandings across racial lines among coworkers and neighbors. It is unstinting in its criticism of our society's failure to come to grips with bigotry; but it is also, happily, crowded with black people and white people who struggle in their daily lives to do just that.
A remarkable book that will stimulate each of us to reexamine and better understand our own deepest attitudes in regard to race in America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This timely, perceptive book coincides with the call from President Clinton for a national dialogue on better racial understanding. Pulitzer Prize-winning Shipler (Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land) brings to bear his broad experience as a journalist in interviewing people about their feelings without imposing his own views. Shipler effectively probes the attitudes dividing whites from blacks, supporting his thesis that many people don't realize when they are offending members of a different background. Shipler criticizes blacks as well as whites for viewing others through the lens of their own stereotypes. To prove his point he interviews a cross-section of Americans to explore the subtleties of bias, and he tackles the problems among groups that are frequently misunderstood: blacks who keep to themselves on college campuses, and whites who see affirmative action as a threat. He then includes experiences of married couples of mixed races, men and women in the military, interracial incidents in the workplace and encounters with the police. Shipler's book is a guide to tolerance and an antidote to stereotypical thinking. 60,000 first printing; BOMC selection.