This review was composed in a Starbucks at the legendary crossroads of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, a fact that may compromise all arguments here lodged against American Skin, the new book by former Wall Street Journal columnist Leon Wynter. This particular branch is owned in part by Magic Johnson, whose likeness beams out from the wallpaper. Gentrification notwithstanding, perhaps the Magic Johnson Starbucks is the perfect place to muse on Wynter’s offering: the rise of the NBA all-star cum entrepreneur into the pantheon of 20th-century American heroes (and the similar ascension of Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, and Tiger Woods) is the stuff that lets Skin breathe. These luminaries occupy a position in the American imagination that was unthinkable as recently as a generation ago. Wynter attributes such developments not to the delayed triumph of civil-rights-era legislation, or to changes in the political and racial attitudes of white Americans, but to Madison Avenue.

He calls it Òthe browning of America,Ó a gradual but definite shift in the culture that’s made the term ÒAmericanÓ no longer synonymous with Òwhite.Ó The evidence, according to Wynter, is no farther away than your television set. It’s the TV commercials where black yuppies hype Volkswagen and interracial couples browse Ikea. It’s MTV and ESPN, and the cable-news circus where minority anchors are the majority (but only on weekends). Because every city resembles Nellyville, because Elvis was briefly resurrected in Ricky Martin’s hips, because Halle triumphed over Oscar’s color line and the nation is obsessed with J. Lo’s back end, Wynter is ready to sing and shout, ÒWe Have Overcome.Ó

But this is not your father’s mountaintop. Look closely and you’ll see that these praises come from atop a pile of green. This is the color of our new American skin, one that’s grown over years of inequity and disenfranchisement thanks to the neutralizing power of capital. Wynter locates the beginning of America’s racial neurosis in slavery; he progresses to the nascent entertainment industry of vaudeville, movies, and ÒraceÓ records and from there to the development of rock and roll, R & B, disco, and hip-hop. It’s no accident that the history of black American music is used to animate his racial puppet show: this is an arena where the trajectory of interracial production and consumption is clear, and where the struggle for black access to capital seems always to end in (precarious) triumph. Music is relatively safe.

The hard questions, on the other hand, require engagement beyond a columnist’s bravado. Wynter hardly addresses old but persistent inequalities like racial profiling, inadequate health care, disproportionate imprisonment, and institutionalized financial discrimination. In that regard, the triumph of the new Òtransracial commercial popular cultureÓ is pathetic — for him, commercial culture is all we’ve got. Ever focused on the image of the American dream, he argues that Òthe door to black participation in mainstream commercial culture is almost wide open, but the price of admission is the negation or denial of the political value of group identity, if not its very existence. . . . I recognize that this is no small price to pay. But it’s worth it.Ó

This is not a unique idea — in Against Race (Harvard University Press, 2000), Yale theorist Paul Gilroy makes a similar plea to minorities to jettison the weight of group politics. For Wynter, the loss of racial identity is counterbalanced by the gain of commercial goods. Infinitely more radical, Gilroy argues against race precisely because our corporate commercial culture co-opts the ÒdifferenceÓ of marginalized people and sells it back to them. For Gilroy, racial divestment is the first step in severing the historical shackles created by that same global commercial culture through slavery and colonialism. If Leon Wynter were ever to contemplate such a thesis, it would likely send him screaming right out of his American skin.

Intended as the death knell for white supremacy, Skin sounds instead like a soothing lullaby for a culture that has long been drifting off into a pampered, overfed sleep. This may be the feel-good book of the year for white Middle America (not to mention the black upper middle classes), assuring them that Wynter’s corporate heroes will always rule, seeking out the ÒrealÓ and hiring a cool black face to sell it to the world.