Race and Policing in America is about relations between police and citizens, focusing on racial differences. It utilizes both the authors research and other studies to examine Americans' opinions, preferences, and personal experiences regarding the police. It examines the roles played by contact with police, mass media reporting on the police, and neighborhood characteristics in shaping citizens' views of the police. It covers overall satisfaction with police, perceptions of police misconduct, and police racial bias and discrimination, and support for a large number of reforms designed to improve policing.

Ronald Weitzer is professor of sociology at George Washington University, where he has taught since 1988. His primary research interests are in criminology, with specialization in policing. He has published extensively on the issue of police-minority relations in the United States, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. A secondary area of expertise is the sex industry. His books include Current Controversies in Criminology (2003), Deviance and Social Control (2002), Sex For Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry (2000), Policing Under Fire: Ethnic Conflict and Police-Community Relations in Northern Ireland (1995), and Transforming Settler States: Communal Conflict and Internal Security in Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe (1990).

1. Police-minority relations in America; 2. Police misconduct; 3. Racially biased policing; 4. Reforming the police; 5. Conclusion: the continuing racial divide.