Recent projections indicate that by the year 2050, racial minorities will comprise more than 50 percent of the U.S. population. That is, the United States is expected to become a “majority-minority” nation. This essay adopts a social psychological approach to consider how these dramatic demographic changes may affect both racial minorities and white Americans.

Hip-hop, created by black and Latino youth in the mid-1970s on the East Coast of the United States, is now represented throughout the world. The form's core elements – rapping, deejaying, breaking (dance), and graffiti art – now join an ever-growing and diversifying range of artistic, cultural, intellectual, political, and social practices, products, and performances. The artistic achievements of hip-hop represent a remarkable contribution to world culture; however, the “hip-hop nation” has created not just art and entertainment, but art with the vision and message of changing the world – locally, nationally, and globally.

According to some academics and journalists, once the “millennials” dominate the political arena, many of the thorny social issues that have caused great debate and consternation among the American public will be resolved. This line of reasoning suggests that young people who embrace and personify a more inclusive society will eventually take over both policy-making and thought leadership, moving both in a more liberal direction.

This essay describes how the presidential campaign of Barack Obama reflected two tendencies of social conduct for African American men, colloquially summed up in African American public discourse as “keeping it real” and “keeping it proper.”

The American dilemma was once distinctively American, rooted in the particular history of the United States and in the conflict between liberal principles and exclusionary practice. The contemporary American dilemma takes a different form, arising from the challenges that emerge when international migration confronts the liberal nation-state.

The forty-year history of African American studies has led some scholars to take stock of its roots and its future. This essay examines the field's unexpected origins in black colleges, as well as at predominantly white ones, and assesses the early debates and challenges along the road to academic incorporation.