Red racisms : racism in communist and post-communist contexts /

Law (racism and ethnicity studies, Univ. of Leeds, UK) adds to the budding study of racism in those countries presumably established with one of their goals the elimination of not only racism, but the concept of race itself. In his analysis of the USSR and countries patterning themselves after it, Law ably documents and describes the persistence of racism (against a diverse group of targets) in all of the nations investigated (Cuba, China, and in central and eastern Europe). Ample sources support the author's indictment of a statist system that has not only failed to eliminate racism, but often has exacerbated it. The irony of the international "nonracist" image of statist nations is not lost on Law; in fact, the insistence on the nonexistence of racism has been and is a major impediment to any resolution of what Law judges to be a nearly intractable problem. For scholars versed in the more common analyses of race and culture in the "classic" Western Hemisphere settings comprising the bulk of the literature in this area, Law's study is an important addition for comparison and contrast. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. W. J. Nelson emeritus, Shaw University