Race and Mixed Race

Analyzing conceptions and descriptions of race, Zack offers an intriguing exploration of the possibilities of a mixed-race identity in society. The author, who is of mixed race herself, teaches philosophy at the State University of New York. Although her essay occasionally bogs down in academic jargon, she cogently argues certain important points: that genetics gives the lie to the theory that there has ever been a pure race; and that white families identify themselves as such by the absence of non-whites among their forebears. Zack surveys the more fluid race relations in Brazil and the history of mulattoes in the United States, including mixed race subcultures of rural ``racial islands'' and the ``cultural suicide'' of the mulatto elite of the Harlem Renaissance who embraced their black ancestry and rejected their white forbears. Philosophizing on the possibility of a mixed-race identity, the author suggests that even if mixed-race color words seem offensive, they ``nevertheless have more human reality than those color words `black' and `white'.'' Zack takes a cool-headed approach to this topic, although more personal reflection might have made the book more powerful. (Nov.)