“Race isn’t in our heads because it’s ‘real,’ race is real because it’s in our heads,” writes Dr.  Laura E. Gómez, a UCLA law professor, in her latest book Inventing Latinos: A New Story of  American Racism. “We think of race categories as essential and immutable, as reflecting  notions of blood, stock, ancestry, and DNA. But they are actually political categories, reflecting the power of one group (whites) to definer other groups as inferior to them, as less than fully  human.”