New York: New York University Press, 1999. 330 pp.

Reviewed by Jennifer L. Hochschild, Department of Politics, Princeton University.

Eric Yamamoto makes five central points in this book, two of which I agree with, one of which seems correct but potentially problematic, and two of which I find deeply problematic. However, all of his arguments are made with such clarity, elegance, and force that the reader has a much better chance of figuring out where he or she stands on these complicated and emotionally fraught issues after reading this book. For that clarity, as well as for the contents of the arguments and evidence themselves, the author deserves great praise.

Yamamoto's starting point is that we must pay much more attention than heretofore to relations among groups of color, and not just to relations between a given group and whites. Thus the book begins with a narrative of a dispute between African Americans and Vietnamese immigrants, and focuses throughout on the relations between Asian Americans in Hawai'i and Native Hawaiians. This claim is exactly right, for both empirical and theoretical reasons. Empirically, the nonwhite and nonblack populations in the U.S. are growing at a very fast rate, and are beginning to make their presence felt in urban politics, neighborhood interactions, job competition, national policy-making, and other arenas. Since nonwhite groups typically live near each other, and since whites are increasingly moving into disproportionately white states and regions, complicated intergroup interactions are expanding exponentially.

The theoretical reasons for attending to relations among groups of color are just as compelling. Most Hispanics are "white" by traditional definitions, but many are neither treated as white nor think of themselves as culturally white (read "Anglo"). Asian Americans are neither black nor white. In some circumstances they can become "honorary whites" (in Andrew Hacker's phrase), whereas in other circumstances they suffer the discrimination usually accorded to blacks. Also, as Yamamoto points out, the

categories of "Hispanic" and "Asian American" are themselves artificial and often obscure more than they clarify. For these reasons and more (e.g., how should we think about dark-skinned Afro-Caribbeans?), analysts as well as activists need to move out of the outgrown black-white binary. In Yamamoto's terms, the "traditional civil rights approach is markedly limited in post-civil rights America" (p. 38).

Yamamoto's second crucial point is that interracial justice must be forward-looking and broadly systemic, rather than focusing on past grievances and narrow redress of particular individual grievances. This is a challenge to lawyers, and to the legal system more generally, and here too, in my view, he is exactly right. We cannot

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understand how apparently small instances of misunderstanding or lack of respect can mushroom into major protests, nor can the political and legal systems make any headway in solving such problems, unless we attend to the underlying dynamics between groups and to the structures within which individuals operate. Thus, for example, he dissects case studies of African American boycotts of Asian-owned stores in order to show how white domination of blacks and immigrants' anxiety about their place in American society get played out in daily interactions. In the process, he provides an excellent gloss on postcolonial theory to show how it expands conventional theories of power and stratification.

Yamamoto's third point is essential to his argument but potentially worrisome. In his words, "interracial justice embraces. RACE PRAXIS.[in order] to integrate conceptual inquiries into power and representation with frontline struggles for racial justice.. In short, it seeks to avoid the scholarly penchant for 'theory [that] begets no practice, only more theory'" (p. 10). All of us who have waded through impenetrable analyses of race and power - whether couched in the language of the law, postmodernism, neoclassical economics, or political philosophy -- must be grateful to someone who argues that the purpose of scholarship should be more than to persuade a few other scholars who speak the same language. Yamamoto goes on to present "four praxis dimensions of combined inquiry and action" - recognition, responsibility, reconstruction, and reparation - and provides an extended analysis of just how these should work in concrete cases. I am made slightly nervous about this point only because it makes it too easy for scholars to become pure advocates, and not to attend to the weaknesses of their own views or legitimate concerns of their opponents. Yamamoto mostly does not fall into this trap; in fact many of his strongest passages are those in which he responds to likely disagreement with his own position.

Nevertheless, I find Yamamoto's fourth and fifth points very worrisome. His understanding of interracial justice is an essentially therapeutic one - its purpose is primarily "the establishment of 'right relationships, the healing of broken relationships' " (p. 10). He speaks frequently of racial wounds, of the pain of experiencing injustice, and of the need to care for those who are psychically damaged by racial injustice. He draws extensively and explicitly from "the disciplines of law, theology, social psychology,

ethics, and peace studies and from indigenous practices" (p. 10) - but not at all from economics or policy analysis and very little from political science. For my taste, this is too soft. People have interests as well as feelings, they gain or lose materially as well as psychically from individual mistreatment and structural biases, they like to win as well as to feel better. It is particularly puzzling that Yamamoto's prescriptions for interracial justice are almost entirely psychological and spiritual given his excellent analysis of power dynamics and oppression in racially structured societies. Somehow there is a disjunction between his scholarly understanding and his proposed praxis, so ironically I find myself asking for a closer connection rather than more analytic distance in this case.

Finally, Yamamoto accepts without question the close association - almost identity - between race and culture. He frequently depicts a racial group as a singular phenomenon, such that he speaks continually and unconsciously of "a racial group's choices" (e.g., p. 187) or "a racial group's framework for understanding itself

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and guiding its relations with others" (e.g., p. 94). There is a methodological issue here as well as normative and empirical issues. Particularly given Yamamoto's sophisticated discussion of permeable boundaries and social fluidity, does a racial group even exist such that it can have a singular view or choice? How should we analyze people within

the group who have preferences or interests that differ from those of the majority of the group? Empirically, given that class differences are growing among African Americans and other nonwhite groups, how should we think about potential conflicts between racial concerns and material interests? Do women always have the same interests and preferences as men within a given group? Normatively, should we aspire to maintain a tight link between culture and racial identity (or, stronger, between culture and racial labels), or should our goal be to enable people to choose how and how much their "race" shapes their lives? Is it necessarily conservative (cf. p. 139) to seek some space between culture and race (which is a separate question from whether the current Supreme Court's hostility to antidiscrimination laws is appropriate)? Yamamoto is uncharacteristically unselfconscious in using race and culture almost synonymously, but perhaps one ultimate purpose of interracial justice is to loosen up racial structures enough to enable people to create a little space between the two concepts.

The fact that this review is more a response to Yamamoto's arguments than a narrative of them suggests the value of this book - it makes one think hard about issues that are as important as they are difficult. However, I should not close without simply pointing out the structure of the book. Yamamoto starts with depictions of incidents of interracial injustice and efforts to overcome it through formal public apologies of one group or nation to another. He moves on to analyze the various concepts used in the empirical

and descriptive section, including issues of agency, power, and praxis. In the third section, which he describes as the heart of the book, Yamamoto develops the various facets of interracial justice. Finally, he returns to concrete cases, using the fully developed idea of interracial justice to show how apologies, reparations, and truth and reconciliation commissions go part - but not all - of the way toward healing the wounds of racial harm. Overall, it is a provocative and intriguing book.