REVIEWS 155

tionally, Alleyne, a leading figure in the study of Creole languages, con-
nects the social to the linguistic, linking identity and the verbal mani-
festation of racial and ethnic categorization. The author draws his
knowledge from primary and secondary sources, and perhaps most
significantly from his intimate familiarity with life in the Caribbean.
Clear writing and the avoidance of academic jargon make this study
accessible to readers of all levels.
 Chapter One begins with an important overview of research on race
in biology and genetics. It points to a crucial fact still denied or over-
looked by many contemporary scholars: gene pools are randomly
distributed across races, making the putative "races" unviable as sci-
entific concepts. Nevertheless, as we all know, people perceive them-
selves as being "different." Alleyne responds to this paradox by argu-
ing that race is a "socialized perception of biological phenotypical char-
acteristics," not simply a genetic attribute (3). Accordingly, a main goal
of the book is to identify how and why communities invest salient physi-
cal attributes (skin color, hair texture, and size and shape of various
parts of the body) with meaning.
 Chapter Two discusses the origins of racial and ethnic awareness
and evaluation, highlighting studies of these phenomena done among
children. Other scholars deal with the social emphasis on physical
differences only superficially, dismiss them as folk ideas, or conflate
Caribbean notions of race and ethnicity with those of Europe or North
America. In contrast, Alleyne carefully positions these social processes
in terms of specific political and historical circumstances. This is evi-
dent in Chapter Three's diachronic review of the history of race and
ethnicity in Europe. It includes a detailed discussion of Christianity
under colonialism and its role in justifying and asserting why people
whose skin is "black" were to "to be reviled by God and man" (52). In
addition, he argues that racial antagonism against persons of African
descent is not the result of slavery in the Americas.
 Asia (India, China, and Japan) and Africa are the main topics dealt
with in Chapter Four. Alleyne explains that migration ties these dis-
parate continents and their histories to the Caribbean. Like other parts
of the book, this chapter relies on cross-cultural comparisons to dem-
onstrate how language's role in describing racial difference relates to
aesthetics, popular attitudes, and political changes. While every book
must have a limited scope, it is surprising that racial and ethnic diver-
sity within China itself goes unmentioned. Also, in discussing percep-
tions of color, the author states that the Chinese did not refer to them-
selves as "we yellow people" (70). However, perhaps it should be noted