Rethinking the Color Line : Readings in Race and Ethnicity

Now with SAGE Publishing!

User-friendly without sacrificing intellectual or theoretical rigor, this popular anthology for race and ethnic relations courses introduces students to classic statements, contemporary favorites, and works by early career scholars. Rethinking the Color Line helps make sense of how race and ethnicity influence aspects of social life in ways that are often made invisible by culture, politics, and economics. The readings reflect a variety of approaches to studying race and ethnicity: a focus on specific minority groups; two or more groups in comparative perspective; and topics that look at the experience of many groups historically and within social institutions. Readers will see how they influence and in turn are influenced by race and ethnic relations.

The new Sixth Edition has been thoroughly revised, with 18 new selections addressing topics that reflect the current debates and state of contemporary U.S. race relations, including:

• Current representations of Arabs and Muslims in the media
• Links among racial discrimination, stress, and public health outcomes
• How skin bleaching and cosmetic surgery are used to acquire racial "capital"
• The rising racial wealth gap
• How the race of drug users can turn a "crime" problem into a "public health" problem
• How race shapes immigration policies
• Home DNA ancestry tests and the blurring of existing racial boundaries

Charles A. Gallagher is professor and chair of the Sociology and Criminal Justice Department at La Salle University. His research focuses on social inequality, race relations, and immigration and has published over 50 articles, reviews, and books on these topics. As a nationally recognized expert on race, immigration, and social inequality Professor Gallagher has given over sixty talks on these topics around the country, serves as an expert witness on civil rights cases, and is a frequent media source on these issues, appearing in the press, television, and radio interviews over 100 times. He is currently writing a book on how institutions create self-reinforcing accounts of colorblind egalitarianism that serve to maintain, normalize, and reproduce racial inequality. He recently returned from Fulbright Scholar in the UK where he studied residents’ views on immigration. He also serves as Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Urban Ethnography Project.