Social Issues: The author chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. As he provocatively illustrates, racist thinking did not arise from ignorance or hatred. Racist ideas were created and popularized in an effort to defend deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and to rationalize the nation's racial inequities in everything from wealth to health. While racist ideas are easily produced and easily consumed, they can also be discredited.

Part I. Cotton Mather : Human hierarchy -- Origins of racist ideas -- Coming to America -- Saving souls, not bodies -- Black hunts -- Great awakening -- Part II. Thomas Jefferson : Enlightenment -- Black exhibits -- Created equal -- Uplift suasion -- Big bottoms -- Colonization -- Part III. William Lloyd Garrison : Gradual equality -- Imbruted or civilized -- Soul -- The impending crisis -- History's emancipator -- Ready for freedom? -- Reconstructing slavery -- Reconstructing blame -- Part IV. W.E.B. Du Bois : Renewing the south -- Southern horrors -- Black Judases -- Great white hopes -- The birth of a nation -- Media suasion -- Old deal -- Freedom brand -- Massive resistance -- Part V. Angela Davis : The act of civil rights -- Black power -- Law and order -- Reagan's drugs -- New Democrats -- New Republicans -- 99.9 percent the same -- The extraordinary Negro.