Customer Reviews

The New Color Line

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I found this book to be a riveting and well written account of a period in our history that I previously knew little about. Even supporters of school desegregation (as we all are nowadays) will be shocked by the intellectual dishonesty through which victory was achieved in this case. And even more disturbing is the blatant diregard shown by the courts for the will of the majority as expressed through our legislative institutions. It may have all worked out for the best in Brown v. Board, but it hasn't in many, many subsequent cases where the courts have overreached their authority.

I am looking forward to reading Robert's and Stratton's next book.

I think it telling that the ANONYMOUS reviewer on Feb. 2nd below seemed to have little to say about the book, but instead bloviated about the vast-right wing conspiracy. I doubt he/she read it - probably just some Democrat intern with little else to do.

This book offered an actual in-depth inspection of the danger of allowing the courts to rule - something the Founding Fathers warned about but continues to go on with barely a mention. I think the Founding Fathers would have been disappointed in our apathy. They fought a revolution for less.

I just received my copy as a Christmas gift. Mr. Stratton autographed my copy. It is a great book, very precise and in depth commentary. Mr. Stratton's unique view on the Brown decision was a breath of fresh air. I can not wait for Mr. Stratton's next publication!

This is a thought-provoking book that may make the reader angry at times to read about the discrimination against whites under the guise of affirmative action. The ideals of hiring the best qualified person for the job is being destroyed by the desire to have equality of results and not equal opportunity. This practice can be dangerous such as in fields like medicine, if doctors are certified because of race and not because of competence.

The authors talk a lot about how it is essential to have good will among citizens for a democratic government to work. The reader may come to the conclusion that in a free society you may have to give fellow citizens freedom of association and even the freedom to discriminate, rather than coercing people by the power of federal bureacracy to hire without discriminating. It is pointed out that if an employer does not hire on merit alone, his business will be uncompetitive in the market. Essentially, we have an ineffecient market now because the best qualified are not hired according to ability. The social thinker Gunnar Myrdal thought that democracy could not get rid of racism, perhaps because of this lack of good will, and decided it would be better to enforce equality with the power of the state in his highly influential book An American Dilemma.

The New Color Line covers the Brown court decision in which the authors give evidence of this being the beginnings of what is called rule by judges or judicial tyranny today. Legal precedent was swept away for touchy feely sociological arguments based on doubtful research that the judges would base their decisions upon. "Creative judicial decisions" similar to "creative bookkeeping" that did not have any basis in the constitution were imposed on the populace. The authors also give evidence that the some of court's decisions came about by unethical dealings. Civil rights were also to be totally decided by congress through legislation, and not by the judicial branch. Separation of powers has ceased to exist.

One may come to the conclusion that democracy is only is good as the character and intelligence of the people in positions of power. If the constitution and law is ignored and a legal decision is unethically brought about, and people in power seemingly don't understand the perils of not sticking with the constitution, democracy ceases to exist. One wonders if they really merit their positions, but we're appointed only for ideological reasons. Actually the original civil rights act has explicit language forbidding privilege through quotas but these laws have been ignored by judges.

The authors Roberts and Stratton seem to be traditional liberals who believe in equality before the law, good will between citizens of different races, and equal opportunity, but not special privilege. The question is though, will some citizens be satisfied with just equal opportunity which will plainly show that there is no equality of talent and therefore no equality in income? A false utopian equality of result is desired more than just a meritocracy with a discontented underclass of lesser talents who will be lesser paid. Also, one may conclude by reading the book that integration with equality before the law was not successful as an ideal. In a few short years, it seemed more like a power grab by the government and the newly privileged than just an interest in equality before the law. And again, is there really enough good will between the races to have one nation? I think I like authors better who think along these lines such as Jared Taylor.

The majority of the book was actually on the passage of desegratation. Very interesting though. It was a wake up call of how our judges create law rather than interpret it. There were many other instances of government social engineering interlaced among the main story.

Paul Craig Roberts was an assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is currently a John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute of Political Economy. This book, published in 1995 by Regnery Press, a publishing house known for its commitment to right-wing causes, is a right-wing attack on affirmative action. But here is the rub. According to the authors, the demise of democracy in this country began with the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs the Board of Ed. They repeat the usual right-wing line about how since that decision America is no longer a democracy, but more like a "judicial oligarchy." That is, we no longer govern ourselves, but are governed by judicial edict. This is a view shared by just about the entire right-wing, from fringe racists to Richard Neuhaus and Robert Bork (see "The End of Democracy?).

What's interesting about this book, however, it the story they tell of how the Brown decision came about. It is not the story we read in history books, about the persuasive power of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP, and the conscience of the Justices in overturning Plessey in the face of overwhelming evidence that separate but equal violates the 14th amendment. Rather, the story that Roberts and his co-author Larry Stratton, a lawyer at the same institute as Roberts, tells is that Mr. Marshall was actually incompetent before the court, and unable to make his argument. The Brown decision came about, rather, because a liberal Justice, and the only Jew on the court, Justice Frankfurter, had read Gunnar Mydals "An American Dilemma". Gunner Myrdal, the book tells us, was a socialist. He had doubts about whether a democratic majority in America would ever, on their own terms, end racism. Gunnar Myrdal, therefore, preferred a more "socialistic" approach to the problem. This convinced Justice Frankfurter, who then "conspired" with someone in the Justice Department (I don't think they say who) to strong arm the other Justices on the court to rule in favor of Brown, thus setting the stage for the Judicial takeover of the American government Hense, the Brown decision that lead to a judicial takeover came about due to the efforts of an incompetent Black and a conspiring liberal Jew.

One would expect to find conspiracy theories of Jews and Blacks against white people in the right-wing fringe. Read any of the literature coming from the culture that gave us Timothy McVeigh (see the Turner Diaries), and you'll see the same ideas there. The only difference is how elaborate they get and the tone in which they're cast. But how is one to explain such views when they're spun by people like Roberts and Stratton, who have "mainstream" conservative credentials? However one explains this, it is to me a very disturbing development in American politics.