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This chapter focuses on black and white groups and relations, finding, Race is an inevitable part of American discourse; hardly any discussion of history, class, politics, or contemporary social problems fails to raise the issue. The ideology of race is always normative: it ranks differences as better or worse, superior or inferior, desirable or undesirable, and as modifiable or unmodifiable. In 1877 Reconstruction ended, federal troops were withdrawn from the South, and national efforts to guarantee black rights were curtailed. From that moment, new legal restrictions were enacted in Southern states to re-establish much of the privilege of whites that had been lost in the Civil War. The philosophy of affirmative action was premised on the historical and informal disadvantages that prevented non-whites from achieving equality, even when the formal barriers had been removed. The effects of prohibiting affirmative action or race-based admissions in colleges have been mixed by race, by state, and by institution.