"Brendon O'Flaherty brings the tools of economics analysis-- incentives, equilibrium, optimization, and more-- to bear on contentious issues of race in the United States. In areas ranging from quality of health care and education, to employment opportunities and housing, to levels of wealth and crime, he shows how racial differences among blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans remain a powerful determinant in the lives of twenty-first-century Americans. ... [O'Flaherty] discusses important aspects of history and culture and explores race as a social and biological construct to make a compelling argument for why race must play a major role in economic and public policy, [for] people are not color-blind, and so policies can not be color-blind either."--Front book jacket flap.