Getting Beyond Race: The Changing American Culture

by Richard Payne

In Getting Beyond Race, Richard Payne takes the practical approach that race relations are ultimately about ordinary people interacting with each other. Payne argues that confrontation, blaming, and dwelling on failure in race relations are not as productive as adopting a positive view and looking at individual success stories. Drawing from his own experience of having lived with different racial groups and hundreds of conversations with Americans...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813368588
• ISBN13: 9780813368580
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent

This book proved a very positive view of how race relations can be improved in this country. He doesn't whitewash the problems, but examines many of our silly assumptions about race (for example, most Americans believe a white woman can give birth to a black child, but never the other way around) and puts them in context, arguing that our attitudes are changing and that there is hope for the future. I use this book as supplemental reading for a course on racism.

New ideas about looking at race in America

This book is positive and different in terms of race in America. The chapter on the Social Construction of Race is especially enlightening. The chapter on the Military is a good "how-to" piece.