In these essays, brought together by the scholar Wahneema Lubiano, some of today’s most respected intellectuals share their ideas on race, power, gender, and society. The authors, including Cornel West, Angela Y. Davis, and Toni Morrison, argue that we have reached a crisis of democracy represented by an ominous shift toward a renewed white nationalism in which racism is operating in coded, quasi-respectable new forms. Introduction / Wahneema Lubiano Home / Toni Morrison The liberal retreat from race during the post-civil rights era / Stephen Steinberg White workers, new Democrats, and affirmative action / David Roediger Tales of two judges : Joyce Karlin in People v. Soon Ja Du; Lance Ito in People v. O.J. Simpson / Neil Gotanda Racial dualism at century's end / Howard Winant "Ain't nothin' like the real thing" : black masculinity, gay sexuality, and the jargon of authenticity / Kendall Thomas Living at the crossroads : explorations in race, nationality, sexuality, and gender / Rhonda M. Williams Rethinking vernacular culture : black religion and race records in the 1920s and 1930s / Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham What is black culture? / David Lionel Smith Playing for keeps : pleasure and profit on the postindustrial playground / Robin D.G. Kelley Black nationalism and black common sense : policing ourselves and others / Wahneema Lubiano The ethnic scarring of American whiteness / Patricia J. Williams Race and criminalization : black Americans and the punishment industry / Angela Y. Davis Color blindness, history, and the law / Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw Subjects in history : making diasporic identities / Stuart Hall Afterword / Cornel West Acknowledgments Index About the contributors