Straight to the point: "...inner-city blacks are more socially isolated, desperate, and culturally deprived than they were before the great civil rights reforms of the 1960s." (p. 245)
As a scientist, I appreciated this analogy: "Like an overprescribed antibiotic that kills beneficial microorganisms and eventually encourages resistant strains of bacteria, the civil rights approach to social justice, once a miracle cure, now threatens to do more harm than good." (p. 243)
On December 6, 1866 a resolution was presented in Congress to amend the US Constitution to include "All national and state laws shall be equally applicable to every citizen, and no discrimination shall be made on account of race and color". The amendment didn't make it. However, a similarly worded article is part of the French Constitution. How many university students, drifting yet again through the required religious idolatry of MLK Day, realize that Brown v. Board of Education necessarily relied on the pop psychology prevalent in the era, allowing a conclusion that African-Americans, unique among races, suffer inferior experiences when congregating together, even when freely doing so? The author revisits the woes of African-Americans devastated by a Supreme Court decision based on pop psychology. The sorry history of busing, and judges deciding what is best for students, to the exclusion of other remedies, is laid out. But there is no lament in the book about the failed constitutional amendment. To the contrary, the author is grateful that its absence yields to government and private programs to WISELY provide forced integration - or forced segregation. "Not every distinction - even if based on race or sex - is invidious. Some are practical: sex-exclusive restrooms prevent avoidable embarrassment, harassment, and assault". No controversy here. Some of the later ones are a bit more controversial. (The word invidious is used 8 times in the book.)
Let's consider a forced integration: "Elite employers and selective universities aggressively seek out minority-race applicants in order to achieve racial diversity." (page 196). True. They do "aggressively seek out minority-race applicants". They also seek them out to discriminate against them, Asian-American applicants being a case in point. Expert statistical analysis (of the sort that the author wisely defends), shows that white Americans are effectively having their ACT scores boosted by 3 points relative to Asian-Americans at select universities. Is this invidious? Does the alleged promotion of integration trump the empathy due to the individual being discriminated against? Well, the author doesn't go down that particular road to investigate that practice. In a different context (p.225) the author states: "This may seem unfair if you think that individuals have a right to equal treatment that no collective goal can outweigh". The book is not a libertarian tract, and does not advocate the French solution. The author is in favor of government being allowed to use racial discrimination wisely. On page 156 he mercilessly slams the Roberts court for finding the French constitutional principle in the US constitution.
Page 159: "As a result, men and women who spent much of their lives suffering through and resisting the evils of [forced] segregation can be told they struggled to prohibit [forced] integration." The author chooses to write the sentence without the word "forced" being explicit, and seems to imply these men and women would be distressed about what they would be told. But without the word "forced" -- at least being implied -- what they would be told wouldn't be true. Furthermore, opinion polls indicate the majority of African-Americans would be grateful for being told that was the result; the author is apparently somewhat less grateful.
The author essentially begins with the premises of non-Euclidean geometry rather than Euclidean geometry. (Well, the geometry analogy isn't entirely apt, much empirical evidence is brought to bear). Fair enough: he is writing for readers in the United States, not France. The author follows the logical trails from his premises. The details of the particular legal cases seem to be impeccably referenced and explained. The reader wouldn't find many lame arguments either; the only "lameness" I found, such that it is, has been laid out in my above paragraphs. On page 232, it looks like the author is about to make a case against the employment practices of the high-tech businesses of Silicon Valley. Unlike certain sectors of academia, where reality can be socially constructed, the reality of innovation in technology competition cannot be. Any high-tech executive who doesn't recognize the universality of physical law, and imagines physical law can be tainted if certain races are involved in using it, won't survive very long. A paragraph later the author wisely drops the case with the statement: "Perhaps the statistics reflect the qualifications and interest of the available work force".
Now on to the bulk of the book. Most of the legal issues investigated in the book are not about race. Rather, the rights of elite elderly employees and rich parents with kids diagnosed with learning disabilities are scrutinized. How much injury should parents of children with normal educational needs be asked to tolerate in the pursuit of "social justice" for parents of children with "disabled" educational needs? How much injury should the unemployed elderly be asked to endure in the pursuit of "social justice" for the elite elderly employed? The premise for both investigations: not very much. The author is not willing to excuse greed, narcissism or delusion in anybody -- regardless of race, color, age or gender. Page after page was a relief to read. From my vantage point, the author mostly tells it like it is. The mature reader need not be put off by the way certain sentences are occasionally crafted with omissions to defend a line of reasoning. (The author is a lawyer). The author certainly has penetrating insight into many aspects of economics, society and human psychology.
After reading this book, I am better able to offer my own observation of another consequence of the religious fervor that envelops "rights". (Page 134 provides a memorable description of how the fervor excludes reason.) Some academics apparently assume they have a "right" to bestow affirmative gifts on African-American applicants, a right similar to free speech. Provided these gifts are not intended to be invidious, the "right" to do this protects the giver from responsibility for any harmful consequences. Giving bad academic advice, for the purpose of steering applicants into your own academic program, does not need to be defended as a wise policy decision or a fair transaction. There is little liability for the consequences, as their might be for advocating the purchase of a piece of laboratory equipment. The right to perform a cheap ritual, undoubtedly motivated in part by a desire to escape responsibility for the situation pitifully noted on page 245, is defended like the right to smoke a cigarette for relief (in the designated smoking area, of course).
