COOL TALK ON A HOT TOPIC

Ellis Cose's Color-Blind: Seeing Beyond Race in a Race-Obsessed World (HarperCollins; 260 pages; $24) is an attempt to break out of what the author calls "the well-worn rut into which racial reflections and conversations commonly fall." A pit of conceptual quicksand would be more like it.

Most discussions about human differences remain stuck in myth, pseudo-science and the danker parts of the psyche. Cose quotes anthropologist Ashley Montagu, who more than 50 years ago wrote, "'Race' is the witchcraft of our time. The means by which we exorcise demons." Modern biology takes a similar though less dramatic view. At the cellular level, characteristics such as head shape or skin pigmentation are considered superficial variations in the species. To a geneticist, color-coding Homo sapiens looks more like a cultural than a scientific imperative.

But if race is a nebulous concept, racism remains a concrete reality. Cose, author of A Nation of Strangers and The Rage of a Privileged Class and a commentator for Newsweek, confronts this most sensitive of American subjects with a mix of think-tank analysis, anecdotal journalism and cautious Utopianism. Before he is through, however, his lofty vision of a color-blind society has been modified into a 12-step program for a "race-neutral" nation.

The downsizing is understandable. So is Cose's unexceptionable prescription for a race neutrality ("We must stop playing the blame game...We must do a better job at leveling the playing field...We must become serious about fighting discrimination...We must seize opportunities for interracial collaboration," etc.). But the motivational generalities are a letdown after an otherwise well-considered exploration of a profoundly complex issue.

Cose covers a lot of ground, from Francis Galton's eugenics theory, which equated good English breeding with racial superiority, to contemporary social-so-called-science that has attempted to give racism a respectable face. It is no surprise that Exhibit A is Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's controversial 1994 best seller, The Bell Curve. Cose joins the chorus of critics who rightly challenged the authors' credentials and ideological ties. "There is" for them, he says, "something comforting in the belief--even if it is rooted in fiction--that certain unfortunate realities are beyond our control, that certain unfortunate souls are destined to be losers."

Elsewhere he compares different styles of racism. The U.S., with its predominantly Northern European traditions, erects distinct color barriers even though its population has been paddling in a richly mixed gene pool for more than three centuries. By contrast, Brazil is what Cose calls a "pigmentocracy," where the national myth of racial harmony masks a system in which lighter skins enjoy higher status and rewards.

If Cose holds the U.S. to a higher standard than other nations, it is because the U.S. boasts a higher standard. But he is forthrightly ambivalent on such well-intentioned initiatives as affirmative action. In principle he is against programs that discriminate in the name of ending discrimination. Yet he backs a limited use of the policy as the lesser of two evils.