America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
America contains more than fifty million immigrants who crash the nation’s operating system of “racial” beliefs. Latinos, Asians, Indians, Arabs, and West Indians cannot and (very often) will not define themselves in relation to the white/black dichotomy. As Soledad, a Latina from Colombia put it: “whoever did this made a lot of mistakes. Whoever did the census form wasn’t educated enough about race.” Latinos explode the categories normally used in the United States; and as they reconfigure themselves they offer all Americans an historic opportunity to eliminate the most lasting consequence of slavery - the white/black dichotomy that defines Americans by what divides Americans.
America’s Banquet of Cultures: Mining the Cultural Acres of Diamonds in Our Own Backyard
America desperately needs a new metaphor for immigration and its cultural consequences. The melting pot is an historical illusion; and immigrants –Latinos in particular- have as much to offer America as America has to offer them. No one needs to go abroad to shape and broaden mind and character; the world is already at our doorstep and we should actively use others cultures (e.g., Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban) to learn about them and, simultaneously, about ourselves. The presentation also argues that Americans –especially American sociologists-can learn a great deal about immigration by reading the work of the great Cuban anthropologist, Fernando Ortiz. He understood what actually happens when different cultures interact for significant periods of time.
What Melting Pot? Up to 1965 the U.S. Shut the Door in the Face of Almost Everyone on Earth
Senator Richard Durbin (D., Illinois) made this comment on March 27, 2006: “America has two great traditions. We are a nation of immigrants and we are a nation intolerant of immigrants.” This presentation traces the intolerance that characterized U.S. policies until 1965; then, with a new set of immigration laws, the United States unintentionally “invited” the very people who, historically, it never wanted. The United States is now dealing with the cultural consequences of trying to absorb the Latinos, Asians, Indians, Arabs and West Indians who were formerly denied citizenship because they were not white.
The Oldest Colony on Earth: The Century Long Relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States
This presentation is rooted in Fernandez’s visits to ten of the U.S. Presidential libraries. He discovered documents formerly classified and he casts a new spotlight on a number of controversial issues: How and why did Puerto Ricans become U.S. citizens? How did Vieques become one of the most contaminated spots in the world? Why did the State Department force Puerto Rico to use the word Commonwealth as a means of self description? And what can Puerto Ricans do about a government that has continually claimed plenary or absolute power over Puerto Ricans since July 25th, 1898?
Prisoners of Colonialism: Puerto Rican Revolutionaries and the Struggle for Decolonization
Fernandez discusses the nationalist movement headed by Pedro Albizu Campos; and, in addition, he offers first hand insights into Los Macheteros and the FALN (Las Fuerzas Armadas de Revolución). Fernandez has interviewed many members of all the groups and, in addition to history he offers personal glimpses of some of Puerto Rico’s most dedicated patriots. The presentation also poses this crucial question: When is it justifiable to use violence against colonial authority?
Cruising the Caribbean: The United States and the Caribbean in the Twentieth Century
In April of 1930, U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic C.B. Curtis sent this message to President Hoover: “Can’t you persuade Al Capone to offer him (Rafael Trujillo) more money than he making here to come to the United States? That ought to attract Trujillo”. In 1919 General Enoch Crowder sat in a U.S. destroyer off the coast of Cuba. As President Woodrow Wilson promised self determination to all nations, General Crowder was writing the Cuban constitution!This presentation traces the generally unknown history of U.S. political, economic and military involvement in the Spanish and English speaking Caribbean.
Jacket Design by Savitsli Design
America Beyond Black and White is 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.
Formal publication date for America Beyond Black and White is October 1, 2007. Below are two prepubication 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
"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.
