Race continues to thrive as a category of analysis among state and federal institutions and in medical, scientific, and social research.  Despite concerns that race is a hollow and misleading concept, studies of race have produced overwhelming documentation of inequalities from birth to education, income, crime, punishment, disease, treatment, and death.  Can race and ethnicity be objects of analysis and targets of policy, to alleviate inequalities, without causing harm by reifying invidious distinctions?  This conference probes these quandaries by bringing together researchers and journal editors in medicine, science, law, and social science to explore the competing interests that make studies of race both feared and desired.