| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Beyond Black and White: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the U. S. South and Southwest. Edited by Stephanie Cole and Alison M. Parker. (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2004. xxx + 144 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes. $32.95, cloth; $16.95, paper.)

The study of race in America may be experiencing a tidal shift. If so, this short but provocative collection of essays can be read as an encouraging measure of the possibilities. The relatively recent flurry of "whiteness" studies invigorated the discussion of race and emphasized what has come to be the dominant take on the topic—that racial categories are constructed, not inherent, as fluid and shifting as Americans' notions about themselves. The odd result, however, has been to leave as rigid as ever the assumption of two and only two races, namely the pair that were the only options in our first census in 1790: white and black (or "Negro" in that first headcount). Dip into any time in our past, on the other hand, and you will find "race" applied as well to American Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Italians, Mexicans, Central and South Americans, Irish, Hawaiians, French, and any number of other groups, including, in one census, Hindus. If race is constructed, and if the term has been used to label such varied bunches, it follows that all those categories are equally slippery—and, as these essays emphasize, equally interactive as their definitions have morphed and evolved over time.

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