This is a book about the stickiness of identity. Its focus is racial identities in the contemporary United States, which, it argues, were 'institutionalized' and 'objectified'. It uses historical analysis and life-history interviews to show how the institutionalization and objectification of racial stories makes them 'sticky', even when they're challenged and critiqued.

This book looks at why people keep using identities even after the stories from which they were constructed have been rejected.