"This study explores how in spite of forty years of somewhat successful affirmative action policies and institutional reforms, every socio-economic indicator, every demographic study, every political study shows that wealth, poverty, unemployment, education, spatial segregation, rates of incarceration and voting patterns are still correlated to race. That is because in the US, beyond the legal veneer of equal rights, the fundamental structure of American society is still defined by race. And because of the centrality of the race concept in American history, equal rights will never have full meaning until some of these most blatant inequalities are addressed. Worse, racial patterns of mass incarceration and efforts at disenfranchisement suggest that equal rights remain under attack in an indirect but still very troubling manner."