Dyson reveals the pernicious influence of racial thinking across the broad canvas of American social and cultural life, from the disjunction between how whites and blacks view the world, to the way perceptions of black masculinity thwart black leadership, to the politics of nostalgia that keeps us looking to an imaginary past rather than creating a positive future.

Through painful examples drawn from within the black community - sexual conflict in the black church, the myth of the "head Negro," relations between black men and women - he depicts our ongoing failure to break free of the rule of race.

"In a color-blind society, we can only see black and white," warns Dyson as he argues for color consciousness informed by history and shaped by hope. Provocative and compelling, Race Rules is the most important work to date from the "hiphop intellectual" who stands at the forefront of his generation of black public thinkers.