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""You're hearing all of that right next to each other and that, I think, is what makes it really wonderful," Werner says. "If, on some basic level, the civil rights movement is about freedom, it's about the freedom to be who you are, not fit yourself into a niche. And I think you really feel that in the soundtrack of '63.""

Fruitvale Station has found a particular resonance with audiences this week. A brief but eloquent scene deftly illustrates the subtleties of white privilege - a reality too seldom portrayed in film and too often ignored by its beneficiaries in life. When Hollywood tackles race directly, it's usually by way of uplifting allegories like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," "Crash" and "The Help," each of which, in its own way, perpetuates the consoling idea that eradicating racism is simply a matter of purging our negative prejudices. Rarely do films ask audiences to grapple with the deeply embedded, race-based habits that give white Americans an edge in everything from housing to employment, or the positive racial profiling that grants white people countless free passes."

Most Americans want their children to grow up to be "colorblind" when it comes to race. As a result, many parents, particularly white ones, don't discuss race with their children at all. But research demonstrates that babies as young as six months can recognize racial differences. And as they get older, kids start mentally categorizing people based on their race, whether they've been taught to by their parents or not. In fact, the authors of the book NurtureShock argue that parents' silence on the question may be exacerbating the problem. In the absence of open discussions about the role of race in kids' lives, they draw their own conclusions, some of which would be horrifying to progressive parents.

New research shows that whites in the U.S. believe there are increases in racial bias toward them and public policies that create inequality. Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Abigail Thernstrom deems these claims as 'ridiculous,' and adds that race-based preferences will vanish when all students have leveled playing fields in schools

"The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975," among other things an extraordinary feat of editing and archival research, takes up a familiar period in American history from a fresh and fascinating angle. In the late 1960s and early '70s, Swedish television journalists traveled to the United States with the intention of "showing the country as it really is." Some of the images and interviews they collected have been assembled by Goran Hugo Olsson into a roughly chronological collage that restores a complex human dimension to the racial history of the era.

" Progress Has Been Made, But Still a Long "