This article investigates why deeply entrenched racial inequality
persists into the post-civil rights era in the United States. It
challenges individual-level explanations that assume persistent racial
inequality is the result of either White bigotry, which is diminishing, or
the failure of Blacks to take advantage of the opportunities opened up by
the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. We propose an alternative
explanation for durable racial inequality. Contemporary color lines, we
argue, result from the cumulative effect of racial discrimination and
exclusion, a process in which Whites accumulate racial advantages to the
detriment of African Americans and Latinos. These cumulative inequalities
are produced and sustained by competition between racial groups to acquire
and control jobs and other resources, and by institutional practices and
public policies. Individual choice in the form of intentional
racism has little to do with the persistence of racial inequality.
Our analysis suggests that Americans' current understanding of the
concept of equality of opportunity is out of sync with the realities of
durable racial inequality, and needs to be revised.