“Across the Color Line 2001,� a pioneering 260-page issue that draws together a multiracial group of scholars, writers and artists from the United States, Southern Africa and France to discuss the meaning of race relations today, is the latest Amerasia Journal by UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center. This is the first collection published in the 21st century to include both international and multiracial writers in one volume.

The contributors include: Grace Lee Boggs, Arif Dirlik, Vijay Prashad, Claire Jean Kim, Mitchell J. Chang, Remy Gastambide, Yoon Jung Park, Lori Tsang, Carmaletta Williams, Genaro Ky Ly Smith, Gayle K. Sato, Bert Winther-Tamaki and Betty Tsou Fong. New York-based Tomie Arai is the featured artist in this issue.

Russell C. Leong, Amerasia’s editor, said the writers in this volume address three central questions: Will the problem of the racial color line (both inside and outside of the United States) continue into the 2001 century? What is the role of Asian Americans and Asians of mixed racial heritage in discussing the “black/white� color line? And is race the only issue — what about other issues surrounding generation, gender, economy and politics?

According to Grace Lee Boggs, social philosopher, famed activist and a contributor to this volume, individuals in the 21st century are now joining communities that are not based solely on racial identification such as gangs, cyberspace, agricultural networks, identity groups, religious cults and militia men. Boggs said this means that traditional notions of racial identity may fall short of providing us with an understanding of why people and communities do what they do, positively or negatively.

Arif Dirlik, history professor at Duke University, provides a compelling critique of how the racial color line has historically been used to oppress communities and nations, and to obscure other pressing social, economic and political problems. “The question is not whether or not we may ignore color lines, but how to diminish their divisiveness in this new millennium,� he said.

Vijay Prashad, Claire Jean Kim and Mitchell Chang, in separate essays grapple with race in contemporary U.S. society, politics and education. Prashad examines the state of race and racism in social and state practice from an historical perspective. He contends that such issues as affirmative action and education and discrimination in schools are linked with the broader socioeconomic injustice against groups perpetuated by the combination of the state and corporate interests.

Kim, a professor at UC Irvine, examines in her article the implications of Asian Americans in relationship to other racially subordinated groups, such as blacks, and argues that racially designated groups enjoy differential status, privilege, and power in relation to one another. “Whites are situated on top, blacks on the bottom, and other groups somewhere in-between,� Kim said. Conservative whites (and blacks) thus use Asian Americans against blacks.

Chang reexamines the educational implications of affirmative action during the last quarter of the 20th century and shows how racial diversity improves students’ intellectual life, critical thinking and learning, and social identity over the long term. Chang is the new social science and professional schools book review editor of Amerasia Journal and an assistant professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

Other writers in this issue include Remy Gastambide, a French photographer and illustrator “born of a mulatto U.S. GI and a Vietnamese woman,� who writes a moving account of the “color of my flesh under my skin.� Through his photography and art, and journeys back to Vietnam, Gastambide finds his true persona, neither white nor European, neither Asian nor Vietnamese, but racially, spiritually and artistically himself — different in a world of differences.

Lori Tsang writes a poem about the legacy of artist Albert Chong’s mixed heritage: “son of Jamaica/and before that of China/of Africa.� Chong contributes an image, “Passages and Totems.�

Yoon Jung Park contributes an account comparing her experiences as a Korean American in Los Angeles, and working and living in South Africa and Kenya with her black American spouse.

“In South Africa, as in the United Kingdom, ‘Asian’ is typically used to describe people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh,� Park said. “People from other Asian countries are usually referred to by their nation of origin: Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Sometimes people from these countries are also referred to as ‘Orientals.’ Some Asians in South Africa are also black. The Chinese in South Africa, however, are neither ‘Asian’ nor black, and sometimes they are also considered white.�

Two writers also contribute short stories to this section: Carmaletta M. Williams describes an erotic encounter between a black American woman and a Chinese American male in Ghana; Genaro Ky Ly Smith provides a look at a Vietnamese/black family in Los Angeles before the city’s civil unrest.

The fourth section features articles that explore the poetry and poetics of Lawson Inada (by Gayle K. Sato); an illustrated essay by Bert Winther-Tamaki on Minoru Yamasaki, the Nisei architect of one of the world’s largest buildings; and a review article by Betty Tsou Fong on the Chinese writer Eileen Chang.

This special single volume of Amerasia Journal (volume 26:3, 2000/2001) is available for $13 plus $4 postage and handling from: Publications, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 3230 Campbell Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095. Annual subscriptions are $35 for individuals and $55 for institutions. For more information, call (310) 825-2968 or e-mail thaocha@ucla.edu.