The essays in this collection provide a background for discussions about multiculturalism, cultural politics, and urban crises by illustrating the ways in which race is still a central source of meaning, identity, and power and why it is intensifying as a category, rather than diminishing. Selections include: (1) "Putting 'Race' in Its Place" (Michael Peter Smith and Joe R. Feagin); (2) "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Difference: The Historical Construction of Racial Identity" (Howard Winant); (3) "Who Are the 'Good Guys'? The Social Construction of the Vietnamese 'Other'" (Michael Peter Smith and Bernadette Tarallo); (4) "The Rising Significance of Status in U.S. Race Relations" (Martin Sanchez Jankowski); (5) "African American Entrepreneurship and Racial Discrimination: A Southern Metropolitan Case" (Michael Hodge and Joe R. Feagin); (6) "Black Ghettoization and Social Mobility" (Norman Fainstein); (7) "Historical Footprints: The Legacy of the School Desegregation Pioneers" (Leslie Baham Inniss); (8) "Retreat from Equal Opportunity? The Case of Affirmative Action" (Cedric Herring and Sharon M. Collins); (9) "Demobilization in the New Black Political Regime: Ideological Capitulation and Radical Failure in the Postsegregation Era" (Adolph Reed Jr.); (10) "The Real 'New World Order': The Globalization of Racial and Ethnic Relations in the Late Twentieth Century" (Nestor P. Rodriguez); (11) "The Effects of Transnational Culture, Economy, and Migration on Mixed Identity in Oaxacalifornia" (Michael Kearney); (12) "Models of Immigrant Integration in France and the United States: Signs of Convergence?" (Sophie Body-Gendrot); (13) "When the Melting Pot Boils Over: The Irish, Jews, Blacks, and Koreans of New York" (Roger Waldinger); (14) "Beyond 'Politics by Other Means'? Empowerment Strategies for Los Angeles' Asian Pacific Community" (Harold Brackman and Steven P. Erie); (15) "Political Capital and the Social Reproduction of Inequality in a Mexican Origin Community in Arizona" (Edward Murguia); and (16) "The Continuing Legacy of Discrimination in Southern Communities" (James W. Button). (SLD)