The philosopher Jorge J. E. Gracia engages fifteen prominent scholars on race, ethnicity, nationality, and Hispanic/Latino identity in the United States. Their discussion joins two distinct traditions: the philosophy of race begun by African Americans in the nineteenth century, and the search for an understanding of identity initiated by Latin American philosophers in the sixteenth century. Participants include Linda M. Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, Richard J. Bernstein, Lawrence Blum, Robert Gooding-Williams, Eduardo Mendieta, and Lucius T. Outlaw Jr., and their dialogue reflects the analytic, Aristotelian, Continental, literary, Marxist, and pragmatic schools of thought.

These intellectuals start with the philosophy of Hispanics/Latinos in the United States and then move to the philosophy of African Americans and Anglo Americans in the United States and the philosophy of Latin Americans in Latin America. Gracia and his interlocutors debate the nature of race and ethnicity and their relation to nationality, linguistic rights, matters of identity, and Affirmative Action, binding the concepts of race and ethnicity together in ways that open new paths of inquiry. Gracia's Familial-Historical View of ethnic and Hispanic/Latino identity operates at the center of each of these discussions, providing vivid access to the philosopher's provocative arguments while adding unique depth to issues that each of us struggles to understand.

Jorge J. E. Gracia is the Samuel P. Capen Chair and SUNY Distinguished Profesor in the Department of Philosophy and Department of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the author of nineteen books and has edited another two dozen in such fields as metaphysics, interpretation, race, ethnicity, medieval philosophy, Latin American philosophy, and Hispanic/Latino issues.

Iván Jaksic is director of the Santiago Program for the Bing Overseas Studies Program at Stanford University. He is the author of The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, 1820-1880, as well as several books and essays on the intellectual history of the Americas. He has held academic appointments at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and the University of Notre Dame.