Racism

Albert Memmi's controversial statements about racism and his call to each of us to devote ourselves to its eradication--futile though this effort will be--are straightforward and lucid, yet also powerful and universal. In this remarkable meditation on a subject at the troubled center of contemporary life, Memmi investigates racism as social pathology--a cultural disease that prevails because it allows one segment of society to empower itself at the expense of another. By turns historical, sociological, and autobiographical, Racism moves beyond individual prejudice to engage the broader questions of collective behavior and social responsibility. Book jacket.