Norman K Denzin argues that the cinema, like society, treats all persons as equal but struggles to define and implement diversity, pluralism and multiculturalism. He goes on to argue that the cinema needs to honour racial and ethnic differences, in defining race in terms of both an opposition to, and acceptance of, the media's interpretations and representations of the American racial order.

Acute, richly illustrated and timely, the book deepens our understanding of the politics of race and the symbolic complexity of segregation and discrimination.