Many Americans believe racism has all but disappeared yet people of colour lag behind whites in almost all social indicators. They are poorer, less educated and have less access to health care. If race has become largely irrelevant and racists are few and far between how can these conditions persist? This book challenges our racial common sense, showing that new, more subtle forms of discrimination have emerged that help preserve white privilege. This "new racism" has produced a powerful ideology of "colour-blind racism" that justifies contemporary inequities. The voices of whites and African Americans heard in this book expose how white America manufactures nonracial accounts of persistent realities like residential and school segregation. The book calls for a new civil rights movement anchored in the working-class, which is made up increasingly of female and minority members. While acknowledging the obstacles this movement will face, it demonstrates why equality of results, reparations and the end of all structures of racial discrimination are vital to America's future.