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America Beyond Black and Whiteis an impassioned call for a new way of imaging race and ethnicity in America. Among other themes, the book argues that white people do not exist, that the United States has never been a melting pot and that race is the most poisonous social fiction defining Americans by what allegedly divides Americans. 


This book is part of the University of Michigan Press' series in Contemporary Political and Social Issues. The series is edited by Alan Wolfe. For more information see www.press.umich.edu/browseSeries.do. Formal publication date for America Beyond Black and White is October 1, 2007. Below are reviews of the book.

"This book is both powerful and important. Powerful for the testimony it provides from Americans of many different (and even mixed ) races about their experiences. And important because there is a racial revolution under way that will upend race as we know during the twenty-first century."
John Kenneth White, Catholic University of America

"Utopian perhaps, and confrontational certainly, but definitely thought provoking."
Publishers Weekly, October 1, 2007

"In this visionary, necessary book, Ronald Fernandez invents a new language to address age-old dilemmas of race and ethnicity. He goes well beyond boxes and labels, easy answers and academic jargon. Fernandez celebrates the unacknowledged reality of multiracial identity, the experience of people he calls 'fusions' and offers eloquent proof that so-called illegal immigrants must be included in the national dialogue on race. This is sociology at its best, clear-eyed, compassionate, intelligent and useful The book is ultimately a clarion call for the embrace of our common humanity."
Martin Espada, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and author, most recently, of The Republic of Poetry.