The Color of Our Future

Rating:
Summary: Keep'n it Real
Review: Farai Chideya has written a very honest account of what she feels the future holds for this country and race. She travelled America and met with a diversre spectrum of young people and allowed their voices to be heard via this book. In many ways this text reads like an on going report or newspaper article and I feel that this format serves Ms. Chideya well.

Here in Atlanta the signs of a multicultural America are abundant. Afro-Americans, Whites, Southerns, Asian, Caribbeans, Jews and a host of other people now populate this once southern strong. This diversity has made all of our live richer and better. Ms. Chideya's book is reflection of this reality. The Color of our Future is Now.

Rating:
Summary: I wanted to like this book
Review: I really wanted to like this book. Ms. Chideya is very likable and connects to many of the kids in her book. The problem is she dismisses people who don't share her view points out of hand. My biggest problem with her book is that she is adamant that Affirmative Action is the only possible solution to racism, but she fails to provide any proof and dismisses those who think otherwise as racist. With one notes exception she failed to discuss schools in which white students were the minority. (She did discuss the singular white student in an Oakland school, but thats not really multi-racial because one is not a group).

If i could speak with Ms. Chideya, I would suggest that for her next book she studies the relative successes and failures of her multi-ethnic gradutating class and study the benefits of affirmative action on that group. I think that she, and most affirmative action pundits, would be suprised to find out how much more class effects sucess than any factor. I suspect that there will be more commonalities in the demographics of her high-school class than differences because white, black or asian they all come from the same lower-middle class background.

Rating:
Summary: I wanted to like this book
Review: I really wanted to like this book. Ms. Chideya is very likable and connects to many of the kids in her book. The problem is she dismisses people who don't share her view points out of hand. My biggest problem with her book is that she is adamant that Affirmative Action is the only possible solution to racism, but she fails to provide any proof and dismisses those who think otherwise as racist. With one notes exception she failed to discuss schools in which white students were the minority. (She did discuss the singular white student in an Oakland school, but thats not really multi-racial because one is not a group).

If i could speak with Ms. Chideya, I would suggest that for her next book she studies the relative successes and failures of her multi-ethnic gradutating class and study the benefits of affirmative action on that group. I think that she, and most affirmative action pundits, would be suprised to find out how much more class effects sucess than any factor. I suspect that there will be more commonalities in the demographics of her high-school class than differences because white, black or asian they all come from the same lower-middle class background.

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: Many will criticize this young writer for being a little cocky and too sure of herself, but I think she writes well about the subject of race and racism--a subject very difficult for most people to discuss. As a teacher, I would very much like to have this book for classroom discussion. The stories about interracial marriage, affirmative action at UC Berkeley, hip-hop on MTV, life on a Native American reservation, the problems of boarder patrol, etc. would all make for interesting, provocative discussion. While her narrative tends to jump around, her journalist skills make this book easy to read. Young people could learn much form this text.

Rating:
Summary: Can you handle the truth?
Review: Some people who read this book didn't vibe it, but that's because they can't handle the truth. Farai Chideya tells it like it is. You can tell she really gets down to the street level, interviewing teens who have crossed the US/Mexico border illegally; interviewing white supremacists and victims of hate crimes alike; interviewing folks who hate affirmative action and folks who got into college because of it. The truth about race in America is that we have a lot of growing to do. If you want the truth, read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Brought me to tears
Review: There are so many books that deal with race these days from a purely clinical perspective. And Chideya certainly does her research. The thesis of her book is that in 50 years--according to the best numbers from the U.S. Census--there will be more non-white Americans than whites. That's going to totally flip the script on race relations.

But where she really shines is bringing out the stories of real people. I was totally brought to tears by the story of LaShunda Prescott, a woman who struggled through U.C. Berkeley while she had to help raise the child of her crack-addicted sister. She also shows a suprising amount of understanding for the economic disenfranchisement of white supremacists, though! (You have to this book to understand her point... how these folks take their beefs with America and instead of blaming big corporations and the government blame black folks and immigrants instead.)

This reporter is courageous. Anybody who can hang with Klansmen and gang bangers in order to get the story is really on point.

Rating:
Summary: Author goes looking for racism and finds it
Review: This is a book many people should read - either to know their friends or their enemies.

Harvard trained author Farai Chideya criss-crosses the country from lily-white towns to . . . well she didn't get to ebony-black towns, but she could only cover so much in one book. America is, if her sample is random and accurate, made up of mixed marriage, dysfunctional families living in poverty and on drugs - with a little physical abuse and illegitimate residency thrown in. She is fond of parading statistics that show that whites will no longer be a majority in the mid-2000's. In fact, if we miscegenate cultures and races enough, we will not be able to tell who is what, thus all be one big happy family. I wonder. In a recent book, I wrote, "If various cultures disappear, either through ethnic cleansing or integration, we will all be the poorer . . . and much more bored." If we all become equal parts Black, White, Latino, American Indian, and Chinese, how many Michael Jordans will we produce?

The author admits there are anomalies: Blacks sitting at their own tables in college dining halls and Chinese students grouping together into a college fraternity. But, she didn't see any disparity between her melting pot ideas and American Indians wanting to teach their children their own native customs and languages.

I wonder what Ms. Chideya would think if she knew that the most valuable animals on farms are those with long pedigrees, not those conceived out behind the barn in a midnight frolic. What has that got to do with humans, you say? Nothing, if you believe that humans are special creations of God. Somehow, though, I can't see Ms. Chideya as a member of the Christian Right.