Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America's Future (Revised and Updated Edition) (American Assembly Books)

In the so-called 'Age of Obama,' many have mistakenly declared America to now be post-racial. If only it were that simple. The reality is far more complex: we still fail to graduate over one-quarter of young black men on time from high school; our Latino population has actually become the largest minority; and with steadily growing Asian and Native American populations, there is a broad multicultural dimension that must now be added to America's traditional black-white racial dialogue. There are perhaps none better suited to the task than Angela Glover Blackwell, founder of PolicyLink; Stewart Kwoh, president of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center; and Manuel Pastor, professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. By widening the parameters of the discussion and giving this divisive issue the attention it deserves while providing essential background material, the authors present readers with a crucial text, one that views race from a sociological, economic, political, and even personal perspective. Uncommon Common Ground concludes with a call for leadership, a summoning of all Americans to take up the conversation presented in this book and move forward - not toward some misty-eyed vision of collective hand-holding, but instead toward real racial equality and justice.