September 4, 2007

MINNEAPOLIS – No issue has so daunted American life and history as that of race. Fifty years after the accomplishments of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, we are confronted with continued crises over racial injustice, but are also being given new opportunities to complete the task of eliminating racism in United States' society.

Joseph Barndt's powerful, personal, yet practical work in Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America reframes race and racism in a new way for a new century and offers tested ways to address it.

The clearest and most practical primer on race and race relations around, Understanding and Dismantling Racism takes specific account of our society's ongoing failure to dismantle racism, the failure of the multicultural diversity model, and the need for a deeper understanding of racism's pernicious but embedded roots.

Understanding and Dismantling Racism provides a detailed analysis of how systemic racism, in its individual, institutional, and cultural manifestations, continues to maintain power and privilege for the dominant white society, while preventing significant advancement by people of color. The task of organizing to bring about positive institutional transformation is described in practical terms, with a particular focus on the responsibility of white people to join with people of color to achieve long-term and permanent change.

Without demonizing anyone or any race, Barndt also offers new, specific, positive ways in which people in all walks, including churches, can work to bring systemic racism to an end.

Understanding and Dismantling Racism includes helpful analytical charts, definitions, bibliography, and exercises for readers, particularly to trace their own history of racism and change. Barndt also includes the newest data on continuing conditions of people of color, including their progress relative to the minimal standards of equality in housing, income and wealth, education, and health. He discusses current dimensions of race as they appear in controversies over 9/11, New Orleans, and undocumented workers.

Joseph Barndt has been a parish pastor and an antiracism trainer and organizer for 30 years, much of the latter work being done with Crossroads Ministry, Chicago, which he directed for 18 years. Among his other writings are Liberating the White Ghetto (1972), Beyond Brokenness (1980), and Dismantling Racism (1991). He is available for speaking engagements and interviews.

Understanding and Dismantling Racism, By Joseph Barndt, Item Number: 978-0-8006-6222-6. Price: $17.00 / CAN $20.50 / UK £9.99, Specs: 6" x 9," paperback, 244 pages.

To order Understanding and Dismantling Racism call Fortress Press at 1-800-328-4648 or visit the Web site at http://www.fortresspress.com/.

Fortress Press