The Last Plantation: A Memoir of Race, Conflict, and Healing

Herself of mixed African and Caribbean roots--her mother a Guyanese Jamaican American, her father a Georgia-born, African American philosopher and Marxist historian--Njeri, a Los Angeles Times reporter, insists that blacks as well as Latinos in the U.S., by definition and history, are mixed, multiracial ethnic groups. By embracing a new, multiracial designation, she suggests, first-generation offspring of interracial marriages, as well as other minority group members who do not want to be defined by a single ancestry, can help break down the polarizing myth of bifurcated white and black categories that continues to sow racism in American society. Afrocentrism, in her view, is ""this era's alarmingly vulgar version"" of a compensatory black nationalism that flourishes periodically. The core of her provocative book is a highly subjective account of the trial of Korean immigrant merchant Soon Ja Du, who shot to death black teenager Latasha Harlins in 1991 during a dispute; Du's sentencing to probation instead of prison, along with the police assault on motorist Rodney King, triggered rioting in Los Angeles and destruction of Korean stores. Without condoning the riot, which she questionably calls an ""uprising,"" an incendiary Njeri characterizes the behavior of Latino and black looters as an eruption of deep-seated anger resulting from minority marginalizing and exclusion. (Feb.)