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Beyond the Notion of Race

by J.M. Montenero

350 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0077; ISBN 1-55212-678-1; US$30.00, C$35.50, EUR24.50, £17.50

An in-depth analysis on the motivational causes and effects of racial behaviorism.

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about the book      from the author      excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book J.M. Montenero's new book Beyond the Notion of Race addresses the single most important hurdle facing humanity's struggle against racism: the challenge of how to truly move beyond the social confines of racial behaviorism. The progression of globalization, immigration, integration, interracialism, miscegenation, multiculturalism and discoveries in human sciences have contributed to a growing body of evidence supporting the view that the concept of 'race' is more problematic than practical to the conventional social interplay of identity politics. While many people speak of 'tolerance' and 'class' as the means for overcoming the anti-social politics of racism, this book goes beyond the realm of tolerance, and exposes how conventional approaches to identity politics have only served to institutionalize social myths that undermine individuality and understanding. The book offers a definitive study on the topic of racial behaviorism and its motivations, clearly defining how and why people interpret, identify, classify, relate to and disassociate from one another by reason of color. In doing so, it delivers comprehensive insight on the psycho-dynamics of anti-social type behavior, in terms of defining what constitutes racial behaviorism, how and why it occurs, and it's affects in shaping society, both consciously and unconsciously. Further motives of Beyond the Notion of Race are to examine the correlation between the physiological & psychological responses of humans in relation to corporeal and sociological experiences. It looks in-depth at how humanity's sensory conditioned relationship to color, in terms of symbolism and values systems versus concepts of ethnicity and group membership, have manipulated the psychological direction of a person's interpretations of their daily social experiences. More extensively, this text illuminates upon how various visual mediums, like motion pictures, television news and entertainment programming and the Internet, can affect the racial consciousness of it's viewers. Social identity is discussed at length, analyzing scientific, religious and ethnical perspectives of inter and intra-group identity as it pertains to the notion of race, ethnicity, evolution, genealogy, immigration, and culture. An explicit look is taken at the sociological circumstances surrounding people of multi-racial backgrounds in an unavoidably convergent, yet socially polarized global society. The book also explores those more elusive behavioral conditions that foster circumscribing experiences of racialized mobility and class differences in education and business, and discuses scholastic deterioration, affirmative action, globalizing market dynamics, and community living. This compilation subsequently reveals what institutionalized rejection does to personal aspirations when severed from the mainstream, how it backlashes upon the ruling-class, and to identify with anti-productive behaviors associated with disenfranchisement, as well as to look at the socioeconomic repercussions of residential polarization, ghettoization, and gentrification.

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From the Author "In the final analysis, no one group can simply overlook the plight of other groups, as they are a part of all others, just as others are a part of them. The sufferance of any one group weakens others, just as their salvation strengthens them. In the final analysis, no one group can simply overlook the plight of other groups, as they are a part of all others, just as others are a part of them. The sufferance of any one group weakens others, just as their salvation strengthens them." J.M. Montenero Author J.M. Montenero is uniquely qualified to have written this book. After being reared in divergent urban, suburban, and rural communities, his exposure to upper, middle and lower-class lifestyles, experiences with multicultural living, interracial relationships, single parenting and encounters with discrimination compelled Montenero to seek out the essence of racial behaviorism. He subsequently dropped out of the mainstream for three years to travel about and reside in ghettos, barrios and reservations in various communities to live among and exist as the people of these communities live. His observations and intensive social research and analysis have provided a comprehensive understanding of how systems and groups operate and interplay with one another across the societal spectrum of greater human society. Visit the author's website at jmmontenero.hothomepages.com.

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Excerpts

from Chapter I: Color Scales & Media Tales

    There was a time when people anticipated racial prejudice to eventually dissipate as a more enlightened and better-educated group of youth replaced generations of racial chauvinism and bigotry throughout the world. Yet the court of popular opinion still grapples with the human temperament in a society divided. Despite the perceived measure of social progress achieved thus far, we still find ourselves reluctant about whom we socially expose ourselves to privately, publicly, and in the workplace. Where we choose to live and the directions we choose to venture through society exhibit social patterns of intense racial behaviorism. Who we proclaim ourselves to be, even the way in which we cross-culturally interact and socially refer to one another, all bears evidence of a racially oriented sociopsychological conditioning that severely pervades our daily behaviorism. Thus humankind unendingly obsesses over racialized constructs of social identity.
    Much of the way in which we perceive one another has to do with the manner in which we have been socially conditioned to interpret our daily experiences. When we each started out in life, we were born without words, born without labels or limits to our understanding of our daily experiences. Words then formed as much as they did translate our visual perceptions of the world around us, devising the labels and limits that set boundaries and obstruct as much as evolve individualism and intellectual growth between one another.

from Chapter II: Profiling Racial Behaviorism

The exhibition of racial chauvinism mirrors the posture of what is essentially a kind of racially narcissistic society in which we live. Many forms of racial arrogance and ensuing prejudice are perpetuated as a consequence of those fallacies and fears that racial pride and group behaviorism (kinship) frequently generates through the conventional processes of social interplay. There is what psychologists refer to as the tension-reduction system serving as a process where basic instinctual sources arouse the individual to seek out ways to reduce negative stimulation, like those brought on by racial tensions. Psychologists have determined that the id may discharge tension in the form of displacement, reflex action, physical symptoms, or wishful thinking. From which we can understand the systemic properties of anti-social type behaviors of racism, sexism, classism, religionism, etc. Common to most specialists in the field of human psychology, are the defense mechanisms of displacement, repression, projection, sublimation, reaction formation, regression, denial, and rationalization, all of which can be symptomatic of anti-social type behaviors like that of racism. The ego may even combine or vacillate between these defense mechanisms, exhibiting a more complex bipolar kind of anti-social behavior by it’s efforts to both determine the arousal source and to direct behavior in a manner intended on reducing the experience of tension, whether completely logical or not. Freud believed that psychological energy blocked from direct expression is a sensation of frustration that must be displaced onto a substitute. The stronger the frustration the greater the impulsiveness to act aggressively, as in situations of anti-social-interplay, that is until aggression as a response to the frequency of experiencing frustration reaches a point of expectancy in the ego.

from Chapter III: Deconstructing The Self

     While the notion of "race" is contested in the moral arena, many search to rationalize what they perceive as being racial differences in one another. The historical development of family heritage, ethnicity, and racial identity, has operated in a diligent manor to support the public's convictions of perceiving racial differences, leading people away from one another in groups, rather than uniting them. Subsequently, people walk through society quick in their convictions and slow in their realizations of one another. It is from this racially grounded manner of sociopsychological behaviorism that people foster their claims of racial differences, while mocking racial stereotypes and embracing generically conventionalized notions of racial and ethnic stock, ancestry, and family lineage over that of individualism. There has long since been a great preoccupation for the conservation of believing in the notion of "race" as a meaningful part of a person’s social identity. As a consequence, people generally subscribe to the belief that racial identity gives rise to ethnicity and vis-à-vis, yet neither has to necessarily have anything to do with the other in the most immediate sense. Even the critically acclaimed English naturalist, environmentalist, author, and evolutionist, Charles Darwin himself admitted that as great as the unlikeness between the various types of humans are, their likeness is even greater. And from this rests the entire scientific doctrine of a brother/sisterhood among humans. Whatever it is that each person takes credence to by the findings of scientists, or by the preaching of theologians, it stands to reason that physical or racial differences are worth little more than their face value. Physical characteristics do not explain the intricate differences of socioeconomic history between humans.

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Catalogue Information

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