Confronted with a renascent right and the continuing burden of grotesque inequality, Manning Marable argues that the black struggle must move beyond previous strategies for social change. The politics of black nationalism, which advocates the building of separate black institutions, is an insufficient response. The politics of integration, characterized by traditional middle-class organizations like the NAACP and Urban League, seeks only representation without genuine power.

Instead, a transformationist approach is required, one that can embrace the unique cultural identity of African-Americans while restructuring power and privilege in American society. Only a strategy of radical democracy can ultimately deconstruct race as a social force.

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Beyond Black and White brilliantly dissects the politics of race and class in the US of the 1990s. Topics include: the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill controversy; the factors behind the rise and fall of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition; Benjamin Chavis and the conflicts within the NAACP; and the national debate over affirmative action. Marable outlines the current debates in the black community between liberals, "Afrocentrists," and the advocates of social transformation.

He advances a political vision capable of drawing together minorities into a majority of the poor and oppressed, a majority which can throw open the portals of power and govern in its own name.