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The United States has made important progress in race relations since the civil rights
revolution. The fact that two African Americans, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, have
served as secretary of state in the administration of a Republican president, and that, as
this study goes to press, Senator Barack Obama is a serious contender for the presidency,
reflects the sweeping changes that have taken place over the past half century. Black
Americans today are more prosperous and more visible at the upper echelons of society—
in business, the professions, and politics—than at any time in our history. That Hispanics
and Asian Americans have also served in important cabinet positions and at the heights of
the corporate world, the armed forces, journalism, and academia is further evidence of the
acceptance of racial and ethnic diversity as a fact of American life.
The justified celebration of pluralism, however, can obscure the substantial and enduring
gap between whites and blacks in the United States. Racial inequality is a reality across a
broad set of institutions, but is most notable in three areas: living standards, education,
and criminal justice. African Americans are more likely than whites to be born out of
wedlock, drop out of high school, fail to obtain a college degree, and be unemployed, and
are much more likely to have spent time in prison or jail. On average they earn less than
whites, and are less likely to work in high-paying professions. To be sure, most indicators
are changing for the better. But for the sizeable segment of blacks who are living in
poverty or in near poverty, the prospects remain bleak. This is especially the case for
young black men in inner-city neighborhoods. There is in fact an emerging gender divide
among young blacks, with women much more likely than men to graduate from high
school and enter college.
Hispanics, the other of America’s two largest minority groups, share with blacks a number
of socioeconomic problems, including high rates of incarceration, substantial levels of
poverty, and worryingly low rates of high school graduation. Since many are relatively
recent immigrants, Hispanics are in certain respects following a pattern established by
previous waves of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, especially given the
large portion of unskilled workers among Hispanic newcomers. But in an era in which
education represents the most significant vehicle for joining the economic mainstream, the
lag in Hispanic school achievement is a cause for concern.
Clearly the legacy of America’s sordid history of slavery and segregation is an important
factor in the problems that blacks confront today. The degree to which outright racial bias
continues to be responsible for inequality is less obvious. The United States has done a lot
over the past 40 years to expunge racism from its public institutions, economic life, and
popular culture. In addition to the basic set of antidiscrimination laws, the country has
mandated affirmative action in hiring and promotion policies, rewritten employment criteria
(and exams for public-sector jobs) to eliminate potential cultural bias, adopted policies to
ensure that minority political influence is not diluted by election laws or redistricting plans,
and established a broad array of projects to encourage young blacks to enroll in higher
education. The Justice Department continues to investigate and prosecute crimes
committed against blacks and activists during the civil rights era, and various states have
established the equivalents of truth commissions or otherwise acted to acknowledge
historical wrongs, bringing a measure of belated justice for past crimes against African
American citizens.
These measures have changed America in fundamental ways. But they have not
contributed significantly to an improvement in the state of the inner-city poor. Increasingly,

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