University Press of Mississippi Minority Relations: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation

The question of how relations between marginalized groups are impacted by their common and sometimes competing search for equal rights has become acutely important. Demographic projections make it easy now to imagine a future majority population of color in the United States. Minority Relations sets forth some of the issues involved in the interplay among members of various racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities.Robert S. Chang initiated the Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation Project and invited historian Greg Robinson to collaborate. The two brought together scholars from different backgrounds and disciplines to engage a set of interrelated questions confronting groups generally considered minorities.This collection strives to stimulate further thinking and writing by social scientists, legal scholars, and policymakers on inter-minority connections. Particularly, scholars test the limits of intergroup cooperation and coalition building. For marginalized groups, coalition building seems to offer a pathway to addressing economic discrimination and reaching some measure of justice with regard to opportunities. The need for coalitions also acknowledges a democratic process in which racialized groups face significant difficulty gaining real political power, despite such legislation as the Voting Rights Act. Review For anyone who has an interest in social justice movements or how to be an ally to people of color or who is involved in activist organizations that deal with interracial issues, this is key reading.--Jennifer Ho, professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillIt's an irony; nevertheless, racial minorities in the US have had a complex relationship in their quest for equality in the broadest sense of the word. Amid their cooperation lay strife and tension. The editors of this anthology bring together a 'dream team' of scholars to interrogate this phenomenon. The collection does not offer any quick fixes to the conflict-cooperation paradigm; yet, their provocative analyses will surely bring this aspect of racial minorities out of the closet.--Stephen Middleton, professor emeritus of history and former director of the African American Studies Program at Mississippi State University and coeditor of The Construction of Whiteness About the Author Greg Robinson, Montreal, Canada, a native of New York City, is professor of history at the Université du Québec á Montréal. His books include the award-winning After Camp, A Tragedy of Democracy, and By Order of the President.Robert S. Chang, Mercer Island, Washington, USA is professor of law and executive director of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law. He is the author of Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation-State and coeditor of Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and the Law.