Two years ago, Newsweek named Farai Chideya to its "Century Club" of a hundred people to watch as we approached the year 2000. Beautiful, savvy, and wired for sound, she's an ideal guide to the new, multiracial America that's emerging as the next generation grows up and begins to shape our society. From coast to coast, from urban 'hoods to Indian reservations to lily-white small towns, she talks to young men and women about their views on race, painting a vivid portrait of a notion in transition, as America ceases to be defined by the black/white divide and enters a more complex multiethnic era. Most of all, she allows the voices of the next generation -- black, while, Latino, Asian, Native American, and multiracial -- to ring out with truth and clarity.

From urban hoods to Native American reservations to lily-white small towns, Chideya talks to young men and women about their personal views of race, painting a vivid portrait of a nation in transition. In clear, compelling language, she describes young people dealing with the complexities of diversity in their everyday lives. She writes of a young interracial couple pitted against their community in the South and of the white teens in Indiana, birthplace of the Klan, who get their black, hip-hop aesthetic from MTV. She interviews a Native American who wants to be the next Bill Gates, bringing computer access to his reservation in Montana, and a Mexican-American woman, working for the border patrol in El Paso, who catches the destitute Mexicans who flock into the United States to work for affluent white Texans. All these young people have clear, strong ideas about the impact of race on everything from education to pop culture. They are honest, sometimes brutally so, about their own prejudices. Their moving stories are the blueprint for the future of America. With a discerning ear and sharp insight, Chideya allows the voices of the next generation -- black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, and multiracial -- to ring out with truth and clarity and guide us to the kaleidoscope of our future.Since the Civil Rights movement, most Americans have thought of race as a black and white issue. That won't be the case for long. By the year 2050, there will be more nonwhite than white Americans, and most of the nonwhite population will be Asian and Latino, not black. Increasingly, America is becoming a multiracial society. Americans in their teens and twenties are at the forefront of this cultural revolution. In The Color of Our Future, young journalist Farai Chideya explores how members of the next generation deal with race in their own lives and how the decisions they make determine America's ethnic future.

From urban hoods to Native American reservations to lily-white small towns, Chideya talks to young men and women about their personal views of race, painting a vivid portrait of a nation in transition. In clear, compelling language, she describes young people dealing with the complexities of diversity in their everyday lives. She writes of a young interracial couple pitted against their community in the South and of the white teens in Indiana, birthplace of the Klan, who get their black, hip-hop aesthetic from MTV. She interviews a Native American who wants to be the next Bill Gates, bringing computer access to his reservation in Montana, and a Mexican-American woman, working for the border patrol in El Paso, who catches the destitute Mexicans who flock into the United States to work for affluent white Texans. All these young people have clear, strong ideas about the impact of race on everything from education to pop culture. They are honest, sometimes brutally so, about their own prejudices. Their moving stories are the blueprint for the future of America. With a discerning ear and sharp insight, Chideya allows the voices of the next generation--black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, and multiracial--to ring out with truth and clarity and guide us to the kaleidoscope of our future.

Amazon.com Review
In her penetrating cross-country tour of the United States, gifted media star-on-the-rise and cultural critic Farai Chideya reveals how America's young people are deconstructing the white/black definition of race and constructing a new pluralistic paradigm that encompasses the country's white, black, Hispanic, Asian, and native peoples. Chideya shows us the trials and triumphs of several young adults who dare to brave the new multicultural world, including Earl, a New York City-born, Spanish-speaking, Chinese/Panamanian/African American college sophomore; Nicole, a biracial 15-year-old Californian; Jaime and Bubba, a persecuted interracial couple in the Deep South whose dead daughter was disinterred from an all-white cemetery because of her bloodlines; Beth, a Washington State blueblood and member of a skinhead organization; and B.J., a high school "wigger"--a white person who adopts black hip-hop culture (hence the derivation from the hated N word). Chideya also scrutinizes affirmative action, mixed-race census categories, and bilingual education with wisdom and accuracy beyond her years. "We do not obey the laws of race. We make them," she writes. "Now is the time for us to chose wisely what we will preserve about our racial and cultural history, and what destructive divisions we need to leave behind." --Eugene Holley Jr.