Minority Relations
Minority Relations
Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation
Contributions by Taunya Lovell Banks, Devon W. Carbado, Robert S. Chang, Cheryl Greenberg, Tanya Katerí Hernández, Amanda O. Jenssen, Scott Kurashige, Greg Robinson, Stephen Steinberg, Clarence Walker, and Eric K. Yamamoto
The question of how relations between marginalized groups are impacted by their common and sometimes competing search for equal rights has become acutely important. Demographic projections make it easy now to imagine a future majority population of color in the United States. Minority Relations: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation sets forth some of the issues involved in the interplay among members of various racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities.
Robert S. Chang initiated the Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation Project and invited historian Greg Robinson to collaborate. The two brought together scholars from different backgrounds and disciplines to engage a set of interrelated questions confronting groups generally considered minorities.
This collection strives to stimulate further thinking and writing by social scientists, legal scholars, and policymakers on inter-minority connections. Particularly, scholars test the limits of intergroup cooperation and coalition building. For marginalized groups, coalition building seems to offer a pathway to addressing economic discrimination and reaching some measure of justice with regard to opportunities. The need for coalitions also acknowledges a democratic process in which racialized groups face significant difficulty gaining real political power, despite such legislation as the Voting Rights Act.
For anyone who has an interest in social justice movements or how to be an ally to people of color or who is involved in activist organizations that deal with interracial issues, this is key reading.
It’s an irony; nevertheless, racial minorities in the US have had a complex relationship in their quest for equality in the broadest sense of the word. Amid their cooperation lay strife and tension. The editors of this anthology bring together a ‘dream team’ of scholars to interrogate this phenomenon. The collection does not offer any quick fixes to the conflict-cooperation paradigm; yet, their provocative analyses will surely bring this aspect of racial minorities out of the closet.
Greg Robinson, a native of New York City, is professor of history at the Université du Québec à Montréal. His books include the award-winning After Camp: Portraits of Midcentury Japanese American Life and Politics,A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America, and By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Robert S. Chang is professor of law and executive director of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law. He is author of Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation-State.
