New Book Explores “America Beyond Black and White - How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide”

Published by the University of Michigan Press, the book is characterized as an "impassioned call for a new way of imagining race and ethnicity in America. For the first time in U.S. history, the black-white dichotomy that historically has defined race and ethnicity is being challenged, not by a small minority, but by the fastest-growing and arguably most vocal segment of the increasingly diverse American population -- Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Arabs, and many more -- who are breaking down and recreating the definitions of race."

Drawing on interviews with hundreds of Americans who don't fit conventional black or white categories, Prof. Fernandez invites us to empathize with these "doubles" and to understand why they represent our best chance to throw off the strictures of the black-white division.

According to Professor Fernandez:

"It's the New Year, and not one of the U.S. Presidential candidates saw Santa's greatest gift: immigrants. They are a blessing, never in disguise, because they move us to challenge the white/black dichotomy that defines Americans by what poisonously divides Americans.

"In 2007, one in eight U.S. residents is an immigrant (the figure for 1970 was one in 21). Roughly 26% of our new immigrants are from Asia; another 50% come from Latin America, and another eight-plus percent are from Arab and African nations.

"These newcomers are a spectacular gift because they move us to look in a mirror that asks questions as forceful as those posed by Dr. Martin Luther King. For instance, if Americans want to create a colorblind society, how can they use white and black as crucial social identities from Los Angeles to New York? And, if dark skin is bad, why do so many of the lightest Americans go to tanning salons?

"The revolution is already under way, as newcomers and mixed-race fusions reject the prevailing Anglo-Protestant culture. Americans face two choices: understand why these individuals think as they do or face a future that continues to define us by what divides us rather than by what unites us."

John Kenneth White, Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America, hails Fernandez's book as "both powerful and important. Powerful for the testimony it provides from Americans of many different (and even mixed) races about their experiences. And important because there is a racial revolution under way that will upend race as we know it during the 21st century."

Martín Espada, Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and author of "The Republic of Poetry" notes: "In this visionary, necessary book, Ronald Fernandez invents a new language to address age-old dilemmas of race and ethnicity. He goes well beyond boxes and labels, easy answers and academic jargon. Fernandez celebrates the unacknowledged reality of multiracial identity, the experience of the people he calls 'fusions,' and offers eloquent proof that so-called illegal immigrants must be included in the national dialogue on race. This is sociology at its best, clear-eyed, compassionate, intelligent and useful. The book is ultimately a clarion call for the embrace of our common humanity."

More about Prof. Ronald Fernandez's new book can be found at the website: http://www.ronaldfernandez.com.