The Race Track: How the Myth of Equal Opportunity Defeats Racial Justice

Despite the watershed election of Barack Obama—and the claims that racial history ended that day—the painful reality of racism in America has been thrust into the headlines over the past year. The Race Track dispenses with the myth of post-racial America, explaining not only why race matters more than ever but also how we can fashion twenty-first-century solutions to combating racial injustice.

The celebrated authors of this timely intervention chart the long history of racism in law, health care, housing, criminal justice, employment, economic crises (including the subprime crisis), and school admissions. In accessible terms, they then provide a framework for understanding how and why structural racism thrives in the present: in systematic racial profiling, the school-to-prison pipeline, housing segregation, and widespread “implicit bias.” Arguing that there is no magic bullet, no one-size-fits-all solution to racial injustice, The Race Track champions an “intersectional” path—pioneered by Kimberle Crenshaw—one that will appeal to people of all races who want to know how to speak the language of racial justice in an environment where many stubbornly claim we have already achieved it.