When Race Becomes Real: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories.

edited by Bernestine Singley Lawrence Hill Books, June 2002, $29.95, ISBN 1-55652-448-X

Public opinion polls gave a big thumbs-down when President Clinton called for a national dialogue on race during his second term in office and the impetus for insightful reflection on the country's most pressing issue almost immediately lost steam and vanished. However, editor Bernestine Singley, at lawyer and corporate executive, didn't let that setback stop her from assembling a notable cast of black and white writers to examine the controversial topic in her gripping new book, When Race Becomes Real, commissioning them to discuss the nuances of race from a candidly personal angle.

A glance at the contributors reveals why this book is one of the most essential commentaries on race and identity to date: Julianne Malveaux, Natalie Angier, David Bradley, Robert Jensen, Kalamu ya Salaam, Patricia J. Williams, Ira Hadnot, Susan Straight, Noel Ignatiev, Hanna Griffiths, and Michael Patrick MacDonald, among others. There is also a provocative epilogue by Derrick Bell, who never fails to speak his mind.

Singley's book is a compelling read full of honest, heartfelt narrative void of sentiment, rhetoric, and slogans. Of the 30 dialogues gathered here, there are only a few that fail to hold one's interest or that hide behind the fog of politically correct views--most are right on the money. Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., who is African American, writes candidly of his impatience with black preoccupation with race and white insensitivity with prejudice in his jarring piece, "Crazy Sometimes," which serves as the perfect counter-point to Pulitzer-winning writer Les Payne's "The Night I Stopped Being Negro," which chronicles his psychological growth from colored to black after embracing the race-pride message of Malcolm X. Gender and racial issues form the foundation of University of Washington professor Joycelyn K. Moody's critical look at skin bias in the lesbian community in "For Colored Girls Who Have Resisted Homogenization When The Rainbow Ain't Enough," juxtaposed with the potent views of journalist-essayist Shawn E. Rhea's "Black, White And Seeing Red All Over," that challenges the myth of the Angry Black Woman syndrome and its alleged anti-male dogma.

If all of the black writers mentioned above attack the racial divide successfully from a variety of approaches, then the white writers must get kudos for their candor and diversity as well. White liberalism, currently a school of thought in short supply, comes under the microscope in author Jim Schultze's "Race Story," as he recounts his childhood in a family of optimist Roosevelt liberals. While award-winning writer and activist Robert Coles acquits himself on the topics of racial fears and myths in "Experiences and Memories," the real eye-openers come from the pens of retired journalism legend John Seigenthaler in his "Son Of The South," Lucy Gibson's "It All Started With My Parents" and Tim Wise's "White Like Me: Race and Identity Through Majority Eyes," all of which deal unflinchingly with white privilege.

If Singley's mandate to writers of both races was to write openly, without censoring their anger or harshest opinions, then that goal is achieved here without reservation, making When Race Becomes Real one of the year's most enlightening, important reads on America's most enduring dilemma.

--Robert Fleming is a BIBR contributor.