Conflations of race and ethnicity, and the confusion surrounding the definitions of these categories, are issues that still plague us even in the scientifically and sociologically advanced present day. Race or Ethnicity? not only attempts to clarify the murky area of scholarship that continues to grapple with what race and ethnicity mean, but also seeks to redress the fact that African American and Latino experiences have not been compared in order to examine the commonalities and differences in their social challenges. Through the practices of slavery and colonization, African Americans and Latinos have been continuously defined by others and themselves through biological and sociological analyses, in attempts to scientifically justify colonization and slavery. For African Americans and Latinos, therefore, identity in the United States is loaded with the dynamics of power and subjugation. Identity must be considered in light of just who is doing the identifying. As Race or Ethnicity? demonstrates, even attempts at self-identification, where a group sets out its own agenda of what it means to be part of that collective, must be contextualized in order to recognize the complexity of what this self-identification is taking place in relation to. Is the self-identification of various groups, although an attempt to empower its people, no more than an extension of racialized discourse? And how does a collective identity empower certain individuals who do not conform to the general consensus of what it means to be part of a group?

Questions such as these are addressed in the twelve essays of Race or Ethnicity?, which are helpfully divided into two parts: “Racial and Ethnic Identity” and “Racism, Justice, and Public Policy.” This division elucidates the nature of and relation between race and ethnicity, and the social consequences of these relations. Gracia's selection of essays work through a number of strategies to negotiate how we think about race and ethnicity, be it an attempt to replace the categories, combine them, or develop new ways of conceiving of them. What these essays lay out for us instead is a more useful exploration of the complexity of identity and its politics, and of the numerous methodologies we must employ in order to understand the intricacies of race and ethnicity in the United States.