A judicious assessment of the history of affirmative action, with strong arguments for diversity in the wake of its demise.
Opportunity for all.
For many Americans, affirmative action remains a pathway to economic and social advancement. Others, however, believe it to be an impediment to fair evaluation. This book by Driver, a professor at Yale Law School, shows how the Supreme Court played the defining role in determining the place of race and gender in the fabric of American life. It focuses on the 2023 case Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (abbreviated as SFFA) as the decision that effectively killed affirmative action as a legally enshrined practice. Driver argues that the tradition of taking race into consideration in college admissions created opportunities for historically underrepresented minority students. The author presents material from surveys and studies to show that classroom and workplace diversity enhances intellectual inquiry and fosters a productive competitiveness in the economy at large. He also reviews the arguments against affirmative action: that it privileges identity over accomplishment; that it potentially advances students who are otherwise unprepared for “elite” institutions; that it runs counter to a race-blind ideal of American meritocracy. SFFA was, in the author’s view, a radical decision, one made not transparently through argument and evidence, but disingenuously. Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion “managed to violate virtually every tenet of the judicial approach that he announced [during his confirmation hearings]….The opinion evinced no willingness whatsoever to relinquish his own ideological priors in order to embrace the larger institutional considerations.” In short, SFFA was a product of changes in court personnel rather than of principled argument. It is now up to universities, the author argues, not to acquiesce in the face of judicial spinelessness or presidential extortion, but rather to fight vigorously for classrooms inclusive of all Americans, irrespective of the color of their skin or the thickness of their wallets.
A judicious assessment of the history of affirmative action, with strong arguments for diversity in the wake of its demise.Pub Date: yesterday
ISBN: 9798987053768
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
This guide to Black culture for White people is accessible but rarely easy.
A former NFL player casts his gimlet eye on American race relations.
In his first book, Acho, an analyst for Fox Sports who grew up in Dallas as the son of Nigerian immigrants, addresses White readers who have sent him questions about Black history and culture. “My childhood,” he writes, “was one big study abroad in white culture—followed by studying abroad in black culture during college and then during my years in the NFL, which I spent on teams with 80-90 percent black players, each of whom had his own experience of being a person of color in America. Now, I’m fluent in both cultures: black and white.” While the author avoids condescending to readers who already acknowledge their White privilege or understand why it’s unacceptable to use the N-word, he’s also attuned to the sensitive nature of the topic. As such, he has created “a place where questions you may have been afraid to ask get answered.” Acho has a deft touch and a historian’s knack for marshaling facts. He packs a lot into his concise narrative, from an incisive historical breakdown of American racial unrest and violence to the ways of cultural appropriation: Your friend respecting and appreciating Black arts and culture? OK. Kim Kardashian showing off her braids and attributing her sense of style to Bo Derek? Not so much. Within larger chapters, the text, which originated with the author’s online video series with the same title, is neatly organized under helpful headings: “Let’s rewind,” “Let’s get uncomfortable,” “Talk it, walk it.” Acho can be funny, but that’s not his goal—nor is he pedaling gotcha zingers or pleas for headlines. The author delivers exactly what he promises in the title, tackling difficult topics with the depth of an engaged cultural thinker and the style of an experienced wordsmith. Throughout, Acho is a friendly guide, seeking to sow understanding even if it means risking just a little discord.
This guide to Black culture for White people is accessible but rarely easy.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-80046-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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