Playing the Race Card: Exposing White Power and Privilege: 244 (Counterpoints) - Softcover

«Absolutely brilliant! In the book, 'Playing the Race Card', the authors have woven a magnificent argument against skin color privilege and have managed to engage us in the possibility of transcending racism. This book makes a difference in our lives and must be read.» (Molefi Kete Asante, Temple University, Philadelphia, Author of 'Erasing Racism')
«This book is an important addition to the growing critical literature on whiteness and white racism. At a time when social theory is becoming ever more complex and diverse, there is a danger that such analyses will be rendered 'academic' in the very worst sense of the word - as disengaged, self-satisfied and ultimately meaningless in the struggle for equity. This book stands apart by grounding its analyses in a refusal to accept simple answers and a determination to affect real antiracist change.» (David Gillborn, University of London, Institute of Education, Editor, 'Race Ethnicity & Education')
«This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in probing below the surface of race and racism. Using colonialist, post-colonial, and poststructural frameworks, Dei, Karumanchery, and Karumanchery-Luik weave a lucid theoretical analysis of race as constituted both historically and in everyday life, for the purpose of building anti-racist consciousness, community and agency. This book is especially valuable today for its forthrightness in naming the racism embedded in on-going forms of white, Western imperialism.» (Christine Sleeter, California State University, Monterey Bay, Editor, 'The Social Context of Education')

Playing the Race Card reflects and engages the dynamic nature of racialized experience in Western contexts. It examines today's anti-racism project to discern how it might benefit from integrating strategies that work toward the development of critical consciousness as its main goal. So that the privileged and the oppressed alike may reflexively examine their own subject positions, this book identifies and addresses the need to develop a working model for anti-racism strategies. Given the need to understand and move beyond static conceptions of race and racism, Playing the Race Card offers both a critique of mainstream/privileged perceptions of racial oppression, as well as a direction forward within a more «organic» approach to social reform.