he would see people like joe louis, nat king cole, lena horne, dorothy bam bridge and hosts of otherswho would be presented as the exemplar of the black customer the home that company now needed to appeal. in its own way beyond laws and the capacity to vote, this was a softer form of desegregation, but one that is no less significant given that this is a country that is billed as much on the capacity to generate consumer markets as it is the capacity to enjoy rights and reform laws. >> is that where the title, "selling the race," comes from? >> guest: yes. and in that tyler want to convey we have to understand the inherent contradiction. we don't want to simply see this as a theological story about how everything became better for african-americans. being integrated as it were into the world of the consumer market meant, for instance, that much of the five -- vitality, idiosyncrasy, the eclecticism of african identity began to be a sort of pushed down and softened up and scrutinized and homogenize so that when someone like nat king cole, joe louis, lean toward, presented with one auth