To study the complexities of race and geography, research and analysis should center on the fatally dynamic coupling of power and difference signified by racism. The author considers briefly the theoretical and methodological implications of key frameworks geographers used during the past century to account for racialized power differentials. To illustrate the political, economic, and cultural capacities that historical materialist geographical inquiry ought to consider, the author outlines the background for a new project-a case study of the U.S. during a period of unusually intense state-building in the mid-twentieth century. The article concludes that the political geography of race consists of space, place, and location as shaped simultaneously by gender, class, and scale.

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Many geographers work on matters of great relevance for the issues facing society, but geography is rarely invoked in public debates over matters of contemporary concern. As a result, geographical perspectives are often missing from public discourse, and outmoded conceptions of geography are reinforced. This forum considers the importance and challenge of addressing this state of affairs. Four distinguished geographers who have been involved in different ways with the effort to raise geography's profile consider the possibilities and limitations of enhancing geography's public profile. Consideration is given to the prospects for raising the discipline's visibility in high-profile public venues, the role of geography in organized international research endeavors, the challenge of linking what geographers do to social activism, and the importance of questioning the unproblematized geographical ideas and discursive norms that already circulate in the public arena.