cover image The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America

The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America

Shelby Steele, Julia Steele. Harper Perennial, $12.99 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-06-097415-2

Steele, seeking to improve strained race relations, demonstrates how social policies intensify rather than lessen racial differences, how blacks and whites tend to see color before character, and how blacks are often oppressed more by doubt in their abilities than by racism. This won a National Book Critics Circle award. (Sept.)no PW