Book excerpt: The modern American corporate-industrial state requires a massive ideological machine to establish social order, create political consensus, train obedient citizen-workers, and dispatch marginalized groups to their «place». Mass public education has helped to forge the modern political state that enforces social and racial inequality. Disenchanted African Americans, representing dissenting viewpoints, have vigorously protested this educational system, which is rooted in segregation, differentiated funding, falsehoods, alienation, and exclusion. This important book belongs in classrooms devoted to achieving racial equality in public education.