"Transcending the Color Line," by sociologist and professor Bobby E. Mills, PhD, represents a philosophical attempt to make sense out of American black collective experience. This collection of essays does not reflect traditional sociological perspectives and methodological considerations. Instead, the query is: How do we live? More importantly, what are we willing to sacrifice in order to live the way we say we want to live? In other words, these essays dig deeper to the moral and spiritual issues that lie beneath the more obvious sociological ones.

Invariably the search for moral...