More than forty years after Brown v. Board of Education put an end to the 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.

This book takes the continuing controversy about race in law and culture as an invitation to revisit Brown, and uses Brown as a lens through which to view that controversy and the issues involved in it. The essays collected here describe the contested legacy of Brown 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. Taken together, they provide a fresh look at Brown in a lively, diverse way.