Book excerpt: Since the election of President Barack Obama, Americans have struggled to understand a world of race relations that has changed profoundly since the 60s-era struggles for equality. For this incisive, accessible volume, a group of the nation's eminent public intellectuals explore what, in fact, has changed—or not. The contributors, including Lani Guinier, Glenn Loury, Paul Butler, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Elizabeth Alexander, Orlando Patterson, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Lawrence Bobo, and many others, took this as an invitation to think well beyond the debates prompted by the civil rights movement and its aftermath, challenging conventional wisdom on all fronts. In a book with relevance for all Americans, The New Face of Race shows how the deep social transformations since the 1960s, in such areas as immigration patterns, the image of black women, and the changing political power of African Americans and other groups, have shifted the ground beneath our feet even as the terms of debate over race and inequality have largely stayed the same. A major new effort to move this debate forward—and to address the real and persistent inequalities more effectively—this book offers a vital set of fresh ideas and intellectual tools for facing the new century.