It was as a graduate student at the University of Illinois-Chicago in the 1980s that Tom Socha, associate professor of communication, became interested in racial issues.

Often the only white student in his classes, Socha also found himself the only white person in the clubs he used to frequent and at parties around campus.

In his relative isolation, he was, as he describes it, "having an experience that blacks have all the time" and one that would motivate him to study how people deal with and discuss racial issues.

Socha's experience was the driving force behind "Communication, Race and Family: Exploring Communication in Black, White, and Biracial Families," a book published in August which he co-edited and to which he contributed two chapters.

"I always said I'd get back to studying black/white issues," said Socha. "This book is to bridge the gap between black and white scholars who don't work together."

Rhunette Diggs of the University of Louisville was Socha's co-editor and co-author of the opening chapter on black, white and biracial family communication.

The idea for the book was born when Diggs, who is black, and Socha, who are frequent guests on panels discussing racial issues, first began to notice the lack of different perspectives offered by those attending the panels.

"It's so white, isn't it?" he'd say to Diggs about the discourse. "Yes it is and we've got to do something about that," she would reply.

The book also looks at African-American child rearing, race and electronic media, and African-American and European-American adolescents' self-esteem, and examines black and white perspectives on life in southern Louisiana.

In their chapter on family communication, Socha and Diggs note that white families don't talk much about racial issues. They do so only sparingly if it's introduced into the family by media coverage.

"It's avoided, not examined," Socha said.

Black families, on the other hand, talk about race "all the time" by virtue of being more affected by racism, he pointed out. "It's a daily point of conversation."

Biracial couples also discuss racial issues, but must determine a common ground for the conversation to take place. "They're negotiating everything," he observed.

By the time black children reach adolescence, they've been given a lifetime of messages about race relations. Mostly, the message they get from their parents is "be careful," Socha said.

"When these children (black and white) encounter someone who's different, they don't know how to react," he said. "If parents aren't teaching their kids how to deal with difference, the segregation will, at the least, continue, or it'll get worse.

"It's teaching children how to be global players - to have a cultural conscientiousness in what they're doing."

Socha also wrote a chapter for the book on family communication education and multicultural competence. In it, he reports that, in schools, it is white instructors who are largely teaching other whites what they know about other cultures. More emphasis is needed on cooperative research, Socha said.