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Maurice Yacowar is right that The Sopranos "bears the critical analysis routinely accorded good literature, drama, and films" (19). Yet critical discussion of the program so far has not considered its interest in race. This is certainly not for lack of provocation. In almost every episode, Tony Soprano invents a new epithet for the racial "others" he encounters at work and at home. He curses out an African-American traffic cop as an "affirmative action cocksucker" (S3E5) and describes his daughter's Black and Jewish boyfriend as a "Hasidic homeboy."1 Nor is Tony's "racist retrograde fucking asshole personality," to quote his daughter Meadow (S3E4), an anomaly in the series. Tony's description of the police officer, in particular, reiterates sentiments about affirmative action and racial equality that circulate in the Soprano household during Meadow's process of applying to college, which plays out during the entire second season of the series. One of the more memorable moments in that season is the scene in which Carmella Soprano offers Joan Cusamano, Secretary of the Georgetown University Alumni Association, a ricotta pie with pineapples in return for a letter of recommendation for Meadow. Neither Joan's refusal to be threatened nor the fact that she has already written a letter for a "wonderful young Dominican boy from the projects" (S2E8) holds any sway with Carmella Soprano, who goes so far as to suggest a viable lie about the boy in the interest of promoting her daughter.2 Although books and articles about the series have engaged claims, like those of Camille Paglia, that the show stereotypes Italian-Americans, there has been little effort to endow the construction of racial and ethnic difference in The Sopranos with the same degree of complexity accorded its treatment of gangster cinema, psychoanalysis, or gender.3 Tony's reactions to figures like the African-American police officer are far from simple. In light of his wealth and connections to highly placed civic officials, the irony of Tony's claims about victimization and his use of affirmative action as a term to ground that victimization speak to the way in which he negotiates his status as both a privileged white subject and an ethnic victim. Scenes like this establish a subtext that runs throughout the series, engaging cultural anxieties...