Yale historian Jonathan Holloway continues his course on American history since emancipation with a lecture on race and public policy in the 1990s and early 2000s. He traces Bill Clinton's efforts to connect with Black voters, the withdrawal of Lani Guinier's civil rights nomination, and Clinton's National Dialogue on Race, then moves to California's Propositions 187 and 209 and their challenge to civil rights and affirmative action law. The second half works through four Supreme Court cases, Shaw v. Reno, Adarand v. Pena, Hopwood v. Texas, and Grutter v. Bollinger, tracing how courts redefined the legal status of race-conscious policy. Holloway closes by pointing to what he calls the dumbing down of political and media discourse about race in the post civil rights era. Recorded at Yale in 2010 as part of the American History: From Emancipation to the Present course.