ABSTRACT
Four centuries later, the imprint of slavery remains. Nearly a century and a half after the Civil War, the American racial and ethnic hierarchy is largely intact, with whites at the top and other groups arrayed in varying relations to whiteness either as subordinates or outsiders (Kim 1999; King 2005). Despite the civil rights revolution of the second half of the twentieth century, the incorporation of African Americans into American life remains uneven at best (Smith 1997; Hochschild 1999; Horton 2005). Although black Americans have progressed toward closing the socioeconomic and political gaps that have long separated them from whites, profound inequalities remain across a variety of realms-education, housing, income, wealth, employment, and political empowerment, to name but a few (Massey and Denton 1993; Oliver
and Shapiro 1995; Jencks and Phillips 1998; Conley 1999; Harris et al. 2006; Katz and Stern 2006). Moreover, racial conflict and inequality, particularly involving African Americans, underscore many pressing debates in contemporary American politics-the imagery of poor black residents of New Orleans left behind in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, for instance, or the disagreements over the renewal of the Voting Rights Act (which was accomplished in 2006 only after strenuous debate) (Epstein et al. 2006; Lieberman 2006).
