Contesting Post-Racialism: Conflicted Churches in the United States and South Africa

After the 2008 election and 2012 reelection of Barack Obama as US president and the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as the first of several blacks to serve as South Africa's president, many within the two countries have declared race to be irrelevant. For contributors to this volume, the presumed demise of race may be premature. Given continued racial disparities in income, education, and employment, as well as in perceptions of problems and promise within the two countries, much healing remains unfinished. Nevertheless, despite persistently pronounced disparities between black and white realities, it has become more difficult to articulate racial issues. Some deem ""race"" an increasingly unnecessary identity in these more self-consciously ""post-racial"" times.

The volume engages post-racial ideas in both their limitations and promise. Contributors look specifically at the extent to which a church's contemporary response to race consciousness and post-racial consciousness enables it to give an accurate public account of race.

About the Author :
R. Drew Smith, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is professor of urban ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and research fellow at University of South Africa. His books include From Every Mountainside: Black Churches and the Broad Terrain of Civil Rights. |William Ackah, London, United Kingdom, is lecturer in community and voluntary sector studies at Birkbeck University of London and author of Pan-Africanism Exploring the Contradictions: Politics, Identity and Development in Africa and the African Diaspora.|Anthony G. Reddie Birmingham, United Kingdom, is tutor in Christian theology and coordinator of community learning at Bristol Baptist College. He is editor of Black Theology: An International Journal.|Rothney S. Tshaka, Pretoria, South Africa, is professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology at the University of South Africa. His articles have appeared in Missionalia, Verbum et Ecclesia, and Journal of Theology in Southern Africa.

Review :
Contesting Post-Racialism is a powerfully persuasive analysis of the ways that race still operates in the United States and South Africa. This book effectively dispels the notion that we now reside in a post-racial or post-apartheid society. The arguments represent perspectives that are theological and sociological, as well as ecclesial and communal. Not without hope for a day when race will be less definitive, the authors propose both the dismantling of systems of racism and the building of an inclusive and egalitarian society. This book needs and deserves a wide readership.--Curtiss Paul DeYoung, executive director of the Community Renewal Society and former professor of reconciliation studies, Bethel University