Codes of conduct

by Karla F. C. Holloway

In Codes of Conduct, Karla Holloway meditates on the dynamics of race and ethnicity as they are negotiated in the realms of power. Her uniquely insightful and intelligent analysis guides us in a fresh way through Anita Hill's interrogation, the assault on Tawana Brawley, the mass murders of Atlanta's children, the schisms between the personal and public domains of her life as a black professor, and - in a moving epilogue - the story of her son's difficulties growing up as a young black male in contemporary society. Its three main sections, "The Body Politic," "Language, Thought, and Culture," and "The Moral Lives of Children," relate these issues to the visual power of the black and female body, the aesthetic resonance and racialized drama of language, and our children's precarious habits of surviving. Throughout, Holloway questions the consequences in African American community life of citizenship that is meted out sparingly when one's ethnicity is colored. This is a book of a culture