Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century

by Hazel Rose Markus (Editor), Paula M. L. Moya (Editor)

A collection of new essays by an interdisciplinary team of authors that gives a comprehensive introduction to race and ethnicity.

Doing Race focuses on race and ethnicity in everyday life: what they are, how they work, and why they matter. Going to school and work, renting an apartment or buying a house, watching television, voting, listening to music, reading books and newspapers, attending religious services, and going to the doctor are all everyday activities that are influenced by assumptions about who counts, whom to trust, whom to care about, whom to include, and why. Race and ethnicity are powerful precisely because they organize modern society and play a large role in fueling violence around the globe.

Doing Race is targeted to undergraduates; it begins with an introductory essay and includes original essays by well-known scholars. Drawing on the latest science and scholarship, the collected essays emphasize that race and ethnicity are not things that people or groups have or are, but rather sets of actions that people do.

Doing Race provides compelling evidence that we are not yet in a “post-race” world and that race and ethnicity matter for everyone. Since race and ethnicity are the products of human actions, we can do them differently. Like studying the human genome or the laws of economics, understanding race and ethnicity is a necessary part of a twenty first century education.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race

590 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 2010

About the author

Hazel June Linda Rose Markus is a social psychologist and a pioneer in the field of cultural psychology. She is the Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in Stanford, California.

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well put together book. The essays are thought-provoking, well-researched, and scientifically backed. The writing is bland and scientific, for the most part, but the content is rich and important.

[Isabel Arjmand · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of essays gives a multidisciplinary view of racial and ethnic studies, and the state of race and ethnicity in the United States, as of 2010. It's academic, like reading a textbook (which is basically what it is), but each chapter is short enough to be manageable as casual reading. The introduction by Paula Moya and Hazel Markus is a fantastic overview of the book as a whole.

Of the 21, these were most interesting to me:
- "The Biology of Ancestry: DNA, Genomic Variation, and Race" by Marcus Feldman
- "The Jew as the Original 'Other': Difference, Antisemitism, and Race" by Aron Rodrigue
- "Knowing the 'Other': Arabs, Islam, and the West" by Joel Beinin
- "Structured for Failure: Race, Resources, and Student Achievement" by Linda Darling-Hammond
- "In the Air Between Us: Stereotypes, Identity, and Achievement" by Claude Steele
- "Ways of Being White: Privilege, Perceived Stigma, and Transcendence" by Monica McDermott
- "Enduring Racial Associations: African Americans, Crime, and Animal Imagery" by Jennifer Eberhardt

[Kate M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Again, read it as it was assigned reading but it certainly did not feel like assigned reading. These essays range in topics from intersectionality to the eight conversations we all have about race in America, and those 8 conversations that have stagnated any thought of change. We should be beyond all of that, but we are still not post-racial and systemic oppressions and racisms are VERY alive and well. This book opens your eyes and mind and will make you think critically about all of our social institutions and how it came to be as it is today. But it's not all hopeless, and there are critical ideas for change.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good collection of essays taken from biology, sociology, anthropology, etc. on what we called "race".
I especially liked the ones grounded in science. One of these mentioned that "ancestry groups" would be a more accurate term to use to describe "race".
I was also interested in ways in which associating a particular ancestry group with being at a higher risk for an illness can cause providers to overlook individuals who do not belong to this particular ancestry group yet still have the illness. Example: sickle cell disease in someone not of direct African ancestry.

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was the assigned book for a sociology class I was required to take for graduation: rage & ethnicity. This book was pretty much complete rubbish. So many things wrong with many of the essays in here, although there were a few “neutral” ones in this book. This was just a one-sided rant about how oppressed minorities are, how racist white peoples are, and the “institutional racism” that runs rampant in America. If you buy into these beliefs, I don’t know what reality you are living in.

[Raevyn K · Rating 3 out of 5]

actual rating: 3.5

[Howie Kahekili · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doing Race is compiled by many scholarly authors with the expertise of race, class, and gender issues within the United States. The whole concept of doing race explores the injustices within the educational system, justice system, food system, and market systems of the United States. These authors agree how Americans effortlessly do race on a daily basis because they have conceived what race is and how to shape it, where people of different ethnicities are segregated or looked-down upon. One section describes how the educational system is rigged due to different class systems and ethnicities. The government has the power to redline different minorities from color from high privileged white folk. White folks will remain in their classes by living in a predominately white neighborhood, sheltering their kids by placing them in certain schools and play groups, and they only socialize with their class. The book also touches bases on how people of color are treated differently throughout society whether it be in the stores or walking down the street. Most of those who power may know or may not know why they segregate people ore their actions are wrong.

[WillJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rich, essential reading for those of us
who want to approach difference and
its associated complexities with
awareness and empathy.

[Mills College Library]

305.8 D6578 2010