Showing My Color; Impolite Essays on Race and Identity

New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1996. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. Ernie Cox, Jr. (Author photograph). The format is approximately 5.75 inches by 8.5 inches. x, 306, [4] pages. Selected Bibliography. Inscribed by the author on the half-title page. Inscription reads Thanks, Jean, for helping me to "Show My Color" Clarence Page May 4, 1996. DJ has some wear and small edge tears. The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist explores key issues of race, gender, and ethnic identity that have arisen since the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, with essays on the pervasive nature of racism, the politics of race, and more. Clarence Page (born June 2, 1947) is an American journalist, syndicated columnist, and senior member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board. After his graduation from university in 1969, Page took a position with The Chicago Tribune, and was drafted into the military after only six months with the paper. He found himself assigned as an Army journalist with the 212th Artillery Group at Fort Lewis, Washington, when his obligation ended and he made his way back to the Tribune in 1971. Page is a frequent panelist on The McLaughlin Group, a regular contributor of essays to The PBS NewsHour, host of several documentaries on the Public Broadcasting Service, and an occasional commentator on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday. Page often appeared as a political analyst on the Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC. He also appeared in the 1993 film Rising Sun, playing himself as a talk show panel member. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: This book contains far more about race than gender, and Page, a syndicated columnist based at the Chicago Tribune, is not so much impolite as pragmatic, a skeptical liberal whose views are shaped by experience. Thus, while he recognizes the value of blacks-only organizations and warns that many who call for integration really want assimilation, he also fears that a wholesale retreat into blackness harms black folk. He observes trenchantly that Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan succeeds by wrapping middle-class values "in the trappings of the racial outlaw." Though he'd hardly say that racism and black rage have dissipated, Page also argues that the worst problem facing black Americans is the "failure . . . to take advantage of opportunities that already have opened up." He also analyzes pressures facing middle-class blacks, touches on the relations between blacks and Jews, defends affirmative action and muses on the prospects of a miscegenated America.