Color-Blind: Seeing Beyond Race in a Race-Obsessed World

“A book this country desperately needs, one with genuine healing potential.” —New York Times Book Review

From the author of The Rage of a Privileged Class, a provocative, in-depth analysis of the state of race in America; a work that not only explores the racial transformation of this nation, but offers a creative and viable ten-step blueprint for the development of a race-neutral society

Is a truly race-neutral society possible? Can the United States wipe the slate clean and surmount the racism of its past? Or is color blindness just another name for denial? In this penetrating and provocative book, Ellis Cose probes the depths of the American mind and exposes the contradictions, fears, hopes and illusions embedded in our complicated perceptions of race. Cose trains his practiced eye on the murky waters of race in America and looks at the acute differences, even hostility, in our perceptions of race exposed by the O. J. Simpson trial, not to mention the controversial content of The Bell Curve. Looking beyond the platitudes and pronouncements that tend to distort reality rather than illuminate it, Cose offers a visionary analysis of the steps we must take if we are serious about finding a true resolution to the thorny problem of race in America.

Ellis Cose was a longtime columnist and contributing editor for Newsweek magazine, the former chairman of the editorial board of the New York Daily News, and is the creator and director of Renewing American Democracy, an initiative of the University of Southern California, Northwestern, and Long Island University. He began his journalism career as a weekly columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and has been a contributor and press critic for Time magazine, president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Journalism Education, and columnist and chief writer on management and workplace issues for USA Today. Cose has appeared on the Today show, Nightline, Dateline, ABC World News, Good Morning America, and a variety of other nationally televised and local programs. He has received fellowships or individual grants from the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the University of California, among others, and has won numerous journalism awards. Cose is the author of The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America, Bone to Pick, The Envy of the World, the bestselling The Rage of a Privileged Class, and several other books.