After Race : Racism after Multiculturalism

Offers fascinating new insights to the longstanding debate over racial discrimination in the United States. This important book will undoubtedly be influential in helping us analyze some of the most pressing civil rights issues of the twenty-first century.--Kevin R. Johnson, University of California, Davis, School of LawA very thoughtful analysis of the need to move beyond the traditional black/white paradigm to address the dynamic aspects of racialized inequalities.... This provocative book will be widely discussed and debated.--William Julius Wilson, Harvard UniversityThis book joins a growing body of work that challenges essentialist ideas about race while also rejecting the colorblind and end-of-racism theses of conservative commentators...The authors have done an excellent job of articulating the implications of what it means to bring class back into critical race theory.--ChoiceAfter Race pushes us beyond the old race vs. class debates to delve deeper into the structural conditions that spawn racism. Darder and Torres place the study of racism forthrightly within the context of contemporary capitalism. While agreeing with those who have argued that the concept of race does not have biological validity, they go further to insist that the concept also holds little political, symbolic, or descriptive value when employed in social science and policy research. Darder and Torres argue for the need to jettison the concept of race, while calling adamantly for the critical study of racism. They maintain that an understanding of structural class inequality is fundamentally germane to comprehending the growing significance of racism in capitalist America.

Antonia Darder is Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Rodolfo D. Torres is Associate Professor of Chicano-Latino Studies, Political Science, and Planning, Policy, and Design at the University of California, Irvine