Race, Law, and Culture: Reflections on Brown v. Board of Education / Edition 1 in Bloomington, MN

When it comes to race and racial issues these are strange times for all Americans. More than forty years after
Brown v. Board of Education
put an end to segregation of the races by law, current debates about affirmative action, multiculturalism, and racial hate speech reveal persistent uncertainty about the place and meaning of race in American culture and the role of law in guaranteeing racial equality. Moreover, all sides in those debates claim to be the true heirs to
Brown
, even as they disagree vehemently about its meaning.
Race, Law and Culture
takes the continuing controversy about race in law and culture as an invitation to revisit
, using this case as a lens through which to view that controversy and the issues involved in it. The essays collected here describe the contested legacy of
as well as the way it is implicated in America's persistent uncertainties about race. In so doing they confront crucial questions about race, law and culture in contemporary America: What were the legal and cultural visions contained in
? How have those visions been articulated in other legal struggles? Why does the subject of race continue to haunt the American imagination? With original essays from contributors such as David Garrow, Lawrence Friedman, and Hazel Carby, this work will be an important perspective from which to view questions of race in modern America.