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Double exposure: Poverty and race in America, edited by Chester Hartman. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997. 280 pp. $64.95, cloth; $19.95, paper. Now that the barrier has been broken around sexual activity as a more acceptable topic for public discourse, race and class issues remain among the few topics on which frank discussion is limited. Double Exposure: Poverty and Race in America seeks to break that barrier of silence. Drawn from the pages of the Poverty & Race Research Action Center (PRRAC) newsletter, Poverty & Race, it presents the views of activists and scholars who persuasively illustrate the role social science can play in supporting social change and activism. The contributors express their views in a way that is passionate without being tendentious or monolithic. The variety of outlooks is exemplified by a foreword by Bill Bradley, a preface by Julian Bond, an introduction by john a. powell, and an editor's introduction by Chester Hartman. The book is divided into seven variously structured parts that address the following key topics: the "permanence of racism" thesis, the use and utility of racial and ethnic categories, immigration, the "underclass" debate, multiculturalism, affirmative action, and democracy and equality. Each part contains between 3 and 10 essays or group commentaries that explore aspects of these broader issues; these pieces range from three to sixteen pages in length. Though the individual pieces have the virtue of succinctness and topicality, as a group they sometimes lack an overall coherence. However, it is perhaps not coherence that is primarily called for in these discussions, but keen assessment and provocative insight, qualities the articles present in abundance. Several individual contributions stand out. Part One opens with a group of nine commentaries including S. M. Miller's well-balanced perspective on the permanence of racism. In addition to his fine introduction, john a. powell provides in part 2 a thoughtprovoking article on proposals to drop racial categories from government data collection and reports. Part 2 also contains Lawrence Wright's wide-ranging discussion on the debate over the use of racial categories in the Census, as well as Raul Yzaguirre and Sonia M. Perez's report on their use of racial and ethnic population data at the National Council of La Raza. In part 3, Paul Ong and Abel Valenzuela, Jr., tackle the controversial issue of job competition between immigrants and African Americans. Manning Marable's essay on racism and multicultural democracy in part 5 is one of the few contributions that explores the links between poverty, racism, and sexism. … |
