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We may no longer issue scarlet letters, but from the way we talk, we might as well: W for welfare, S for single, B for black, CC for children having children, WT for white trash. To a culture speaking with barely masked hysteria, in which branding is done with words and those branded are outcasts, this book brings a voice of reason and a warm reminder of the decency and mutual respect that are missing from so much of our public debate. Patricia J Williams, whose book "The Alchemy of Race and Rights" offered a vision for healing the ailing spirit of the law, here broadens her focus to address the wounds in America's public soul, the sense of community that rhetoric so subtly but surely makes and unmakes. In these pages we encounter figures and images plucked from headlines - from Tonya Harding to Lani Guinier, Rush Limbaugh to Hillary Clinton, Clarence Thomas to Dan Qualye - and see how their portrayal, encoding certain stereotypes, often reveals more about us than about them. What are we really talking about when we talk about welfare mothers, for instance? Why is calling someone a "redneck" okay, and what does that say about our society? When young women appear on "Phil Donahue" to represent themselves as Jewish American Princesses, what else are they doing? These are among the questions Williams considers as she uncovers the shifting, often covert rules of conversation that determine who "we" are as a nation.