Ronald Fernandez - Böcker

This is a revised and updated edition of Ronald Fernandez's acclaimed study of the Puerto Rico-United States relationship. Tracing that relationship from the early years of the 20th century through to the present, Fernandez provides a comprehensive analysis of political, economic, and military affairs as they relate to Puerto Rico. The new edition is completely up-to-date through 1995 and includes important new material based upon documents found in the Reagan presidential library, as well as newly declassified documents in the Eisenhower library.

This is a revised and updated edition of Ronald Fernandez's acclaimed study of the Puerto Rico-United States relationship. Tracing that relationship from the early years of the 20th century through to the present, Fernandez provides a comprehensive analysis of political, economic, and military affairs as they relate to Puerto Rico. The new edition is completely up-to-date through 1995 and includes important new material based upon documents found in the Reagan presidential library, as well as newly declassified documents in the Eisenhower library.

The melting pot is a myth, according to Fernandez, who shows that the United States is and always has been a banquet of cultures. As he argues, the best way to deal with the more than 20 million new immigrants since 1965 is to accept, recognize, and eagerly explore the differences among the American people.Fernandez seeks to forge a positive national consensus based on two building blocks. First, the nation's many ethnic groups can be a powerful source of unprecedented economic, artistic, and scientific creativity. Secondly, the nation's many ethnic groups offer a way to erase the black/white dichotomy which, masks the shared injustices of millions of European, Asian, African, Native, and Latino Americans. This is a provocative analysis of how we arrived at our current ethnic and racial dilemmas and what can be done to move beyond them. Scholars and students of American immigration and social policy as well as concerned citizens will find the book equally rewarding.

Fernandez examines the lives and ideas of sociologists who shaped the main contours of the discipline. Weber, Marx, Durkheim, and Simmel fashioned the early ideas and approaches of sociology, and their ideas are still central to the discipline. Veblen, Mead, Goffman, and Berger added crucial conceptual approaches; they also serve to underscore the length and breadth of Sociology as a science.

Fernandez examines the lives and ideas of sociologists who shaped the main contours of the discipline. Weber, Marx, Durkheim, and Simmel fashioned the early ideas and approaches of sociology, and their ideas are still central to the discipline. Veblen, Mead, Goffman, and Berger added crucial conceptual approaches; they also serve to underscore the length and breadth of Sociology as a science.

The melting pot is a myth, according to Fernandez, who shows that the United States is and always has been a banquet of cultures. As he argues, the best way to deal with the more than 20 million new immigrants since 1965 is to accept, recognize, and eagerly explore the differences among the American people.Fernandez seeks to forge a positive national consensus based on two building blocks. First, the nation's many ethnic groups can be a powerful source of unprecedented economic, artistic, and scientific creativity. Secondly, the nation's many ethnic groups offer a way to erase the black/white dichotomy which, masks the shared injustices of millions of European, Asian, African, Native, and Latino Americans. This is a provocative analysis of how we arrived at our current ethnic and racial dilemmas and what can be done to move beyond them. Scholars and students of American immigration and social policy as well as concerned citizens will find the book equally rewarding.

“This book is both powerful and important. Powerful for the testimony it provides from Americans of many different (and even mixed races) about their experiences. And important because there is a racial revolution underway that will upend race as we know it during the twenty-first century.”—John Kenneth White, Catholic University of AmericaAmerica Beyond Black and White is a call for a new way of imagining race in America. For the first time in U.S. history, the black-white dichotomy that has historically defined race and ethnicity is being challenged, not by a small minority, but by the fastest-growing and arguably most vocal segment of the increasingly diverse American population—Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Arabs, and many more—who are breaking down and recreating the very definitions of race.Drawing on interviews with hundreds of Americans who don’t fit conventional black/white categories, the author invites us to empathize with these “doubles” and to understand why they may represent our best chance to throw off the strictures of the black/white dichotomy.The revolution is already underway, as newcomers and mixed-race “fusions” refuse to engage in the prevailing Anglo- Protestant culture. Americans face two choices: understand why these individuals think as they do, or face a future that continues to define us by what divides us rather than by what unites us.