Charles Michael Byrd, successful editor and publisher of the cyber-journal Interracial Voice, has penned this short book with a purpose which, at first glance, appears to be a distilling of Indian Vedic scriptures and their applicability to providing a solution to the problems associated with a combative social system in the United States which is based on membership in "black" and "white" "racial" groups defined as such by rules which seem to guarantee their perpetuity. Eighteen chapters are offered in which a Vedic lesson is presented -- each lesson is designed to be a springboard to writings of Mr. Byrd as he argues for an end to "race" consciousness, along the lines of the particular lesson. Many of such writings are taken from editorials and messages contained in Interracial Voice over the years. The book ends with a speech given by Mr. Byrd at the 20 July 1996 Multiracial Solidarity March held in Washington, D.C.

Writing about "race" in the United States has long been the charge of academically-based social scientists. The first thing which should be said about this book is that it is not a social science work in the classic sense: with an emphasis on "objectivity" and a collection of "racial" data presented in an unemotional, passionless manner. Mr. Byrd minces no words in letting the reader exactly know how he feels about the present-day "racial" landscape in the United States, especially with regard to the line of demarcation between "white" and "black" North Americans. The reader, therefore, will not close this book armed with a great deal more quantitative data about North American "racial" groups. The reader will, however, be exposed to a mindset he or she may not have known existed, for Mr. Byrd is writing as a multiracial person, not as a disinterested observer (such as the Swede, Gunnar Myrdal, who, as an outsider, described the "American Dilemma" in the 1940s).

And just what is that multiracial mindset? That is for the reader to explore by reading Beyond Race. I can, however offer this: Mr. Byrd's view has an emphasis on joining and uniting; joining and uniting with the entire human family and it is perhaps Mr. Byrd's overwhelming personal sentiment in doing so which has led him to the Bhagavad-gita.

An accurate accounting and description of a mere two of the forces arrayed against humans creating societies of goodwill: (a) unbridled greed (often manifested in monopoly capitalism) and (b) religious and ethnic fanaticism, should have most of us fearful for the future, as we move further into the new millenium. The United States is (or should be) a force for the betterment of mankind. Mr. Byrd implies, on pages 72 and 73, that America certainly has that potential. Yet, the specters of "racialist" thinking, "race" hatred and "racial" and ethnic balkanization threaten America's ability to create more equality for its people. According to Professor John E. Farley of Southern Illinois University, racism has devastating effects on not only U.S productivity but on America's conception of itself as a unified nation. And warring "racial" factors will never unite to confront a U.S. class system which is becoming more and more oppressive and more prone to monopoly capitalism.

Yes, the U.S. has the potential to be a force for good, but the United States will never do its fair share in bringing people together if it remains in dis-union as a nation of separate "races", especially "races" meant to be exclusive of each other. That is why, although Charles Michael Byrd is writing about Indian Vedic scriptures, the reader will soon sense that he is.....a citizen of the United States of America with an American Plea for the Human Family.

William Javier Nelson, Ph.D.

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