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xii Introduction In chapter 1, Lori Latrice Martin, Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, and Melinda Jackson examine racial and ethnic differences in the types and levels of assets owned by blacks and whites, particularly blacks and whites in the South. In “A Tale of Two Cities,” the authors examine the diversity within the black population and the growth of the foreign-born black pop- ulation in America, including in the South. The authors also examine the role of black ethnicity using data from the American Community Survey for 2008–2013 to answer several research questions: 1. To what extent were there racial differences in the types and levels of assets owned for blacks and whites after the Great Recession in the nation as a whole, and in the South in particular? 2. How did native-born blacks fare when compared with foreign-born blacks? 3. Did race alone explain all of the variations in the likelihood of owning a home? 4. In what ways are the experiences of blacks in Baton Rouge and Louisiana simi- lar to, or different from, the experiences of blacks throughout the South and throughout the nation? Finally, Martin, Fasching-Varner, and Jackson address the theoretical, pub- lic policy, and methodological implications of our study findings, which include the need to debunk the myth of post-racialism, the destruction of walls of whiteness, and a greater emphasis on cooperative economics and community wealth building. In chapter 2, titled, “Accelerated Categorical Inequality: New Orleans in the Eye of the Storm,” Geoffrey L. Wood observes that very little research has looked at the relational constraints within which individuals have the capacity to act. Social inequality research in the United States has tended to become overreliant on the development of statistical data and resulting equations to show the intersection of race, gender, and class in an effort to determine which of these has the most salience as an explanation for social inequality. Rather than relying on the theoretical and practical assump- tions of such a status-attainment approach, this chapter seeks a different model of explanation for the levels of social inequality that have developed over time. Wood argues that Hurricane Katrina had differential effects on the people of New Orleans, precisely due to distinctions in categorical inequality. In chapter 3, “Loaded-God Complex: Engaging Educational and Penal Realism in Post-Katrina Times,” Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner examines the school-to-prison pipeline as well as the misery industries (prisons and schools) of Louisiana. Fasching-Varner offers no solutions to the so-called crisis the fundamental premise is that there is no “crisis” at all—the educa- tional and penal systems, particularly in post-Katrina Louisiana, function