A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America.

A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America, by David K. Shipler. New York: Alferd A. Knopf, 1997. 640 pp. #30.00, cloth. Reviewed by Eugene C. Royster, Independent Consultant, Kalamazoo, MI. A Country of Strangers is an examination of the historical and contemporary relationship between Blacks and Whites in the United States. Rather than focusing on issues of quantitative analysis or public policy, the book focuses on ordinary people and how they think about racial situations. The author, David K. Shipler, is a reporter and the Pulitzer prizewinning author of Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land (1986). To obtain the information presented in A Country of Strangers, he interviewed and observed people from a variety of settings: a Brooklyn, (New York) high school; colleges including Lincoln University of Pennsylvania and Lake Forest in Illinois; and individuals and groups from Boston to Houston to southern California. The book is divided into three major sections. The first of these, entitled Origins, discusses issues relative to racial integration, other forms of interracial contact, and the after-effects of slavery. Section 2, Images, focuses on racial caste factors, looking at how people view crime and morality within each of the races. The final and most interesting section, Choices, focuses on the lack of open communication between the races and the lack of understanding of racial problems on the part of Whites as well as Blacks. In fact, the primary contribution of this work can be found in Shipler's discussion of the lack of understanding and sensitivity needed to foster racial harmony. Shipler says that Whites must hear and experience . . .Blacks' anger and not be so consumed by guilt that they cannot receive the lesson. Gentle explanation works where friendship is strong enough....There is much that is deeply buried, and unless we work at digging it up for an inspection, we remain strangers to ourselves as well as to each other. (pp. 562-563) The author takes Whites and Blacks to task for their unwillingness or inability to talk and listen to each other. For example, he notes that White Americans are generous in giving themselves the benefit of the doubt and define racism narrowly so that it does not seem to characterize their actions and therefore cannot tarnish their self-perceptions. In this way, Whites can be deaf to the racial overtones of everyday life to which Blacks are subjected. Blacks are also criticized for their perception of racism where none is intended and, indeed, for sometimes engaging in racism of their own. For Shipler, African Americans often behave toward Jews, Koreans, and other ethnic groups in much the same manner as Whites behave toward Blacks. However, he points out that Blacks tend also to define racism in a narrow fashion such that it must encompass both prejudice and powerwielding by Whites. The author notes in his preface that every American thinks he or she knows the subject of race thoroughly. He asserts that no American is an expert on race, and that when we learn that fact we will have taken the first step toward learning. This, perhaps, is the logic behind the development of this work chronicling the author's travels through the maze of racial relations in this country. In reading a book like A Country of Strangers, one might expect to find information or interpretations that would advance our understanding about race and race relations. Rather than presenting substantive new ideas, however, much of the book covers topics that have been the subjects of a great deal of past research. Much of this past work has attained classic stature, and as such, is difficult to improve upon. For example, in chapter four, the author addresses the influence that dark skin color has within our society for both Blacks and Whites. This and other factors of physical appearance such as hair texture and facial features are discussed in a number of different contexts, but readers never get a sense of where all of this information was intended to take them except as a general statement of one issue that shapes the racial landscape. …