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When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives Kindle Edition

by Heather Mac Donald (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 555 ratings
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Does your workplace have too few black people in top jobs? It’s racist. Does the advanced math and science high school in your city have too many Asians? It’s racist. Does your local museum employ too many white women? It’s racist, too. After the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, prestigious American institutions, from the medical profession to the fine arts, pleaded guilty to “systemic racism.” How else explain why blacks are overrepresented in prisons and underrepresented in C-suites and faculty lounges, their leaders asked? The official answer for those disparities is “disparate impact,” a once obscure legal theory that is now transforming our world. Any traditional standard of behavior or achievement that impedes exact racial proportionality in any enterprise is now presumed racist. Medical school admissions tests, expectations of scientific accomplishment in the award of research grants, the enforcement of the criminal law—all are under assault, because they have a “disparate impact” on underrepresented minorities. When Race Trumps Merit provides an alternative explanation for those racial disparities. It is large academic skills gaps that cause the lack of proportional representation in our most meritocratic organizations and large differences in criminal offending that account for the racially disproportionate prison population. The need for such a corrective argument could not be more urgent. Federal science agencies now treat researchers’ skin color as a scientific qualification. Museums and orchestras choose which art and music to promote based on race. Police officers avoid making arrests and prosecutors decline to bring charges to avoid disparate impact on minority criminals. When Race Trumps Merit breaks powerful taboos. But it is driven by a sense of alarm, supported by detailed case studies of how disparate-impact thinking is jeopardizing scientific progress, destroying public order, and poisoning the appreciation of art and culture. As long as alleged racism remains the only allowable explanation for racial differences, we will continue tearing down excellence and putting lives, as well as civilizational achievement, at risk.
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  5. Publication date
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  1. What's it about?

    This book explains how large academic skills gaps and differences in criminal offending account for racial disparities in our most meritocratic organizations and prison population.

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    But racial disparities in outcomes are overwhelmingly the result of measurable differences in achievement and behavior, not the result of racism.
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    The concept of disparate impact is destroying America’s core institutions in the name of fighting invented racism.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Heather Mac Donald has done it again! Her new book, When Race Trumps Merit, is a fact-filled, eloquent, and passionate critique of the drift toward relativism and mediocrity that is being visited upon us by progressive elites in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is an important, persuasive, and morally righteous jeremiad that deserves to be widely read.

– Glenn C. Loury, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences at Brown University



Western institutions that once stood tall have begun to erode under the utter destruction brought on by one word: equity. Heather Mac Donald brilliantly breaks down this regressive equity epidemic in which race overtakes merit. Built on a foundation of pseudo-intellectual drivel, it has infected our justice system, science, medicine, and more.

– Ben Shapiro, Host of The Ben Shapiro Show



Heather Mac Donald's When Race Trumps Merit is a tour de force that brings to bear the author's prodigious cultural formation, clear prose, and, most important of all, unflinching courage. Mac Donald observes the growing threats to the West, from criminal acts to cultural degradation—burglaries to rewriting Beethoven—and she proposes to excise the pernicious ideology behind these evils at a time when more cowardly commentators dare not even criticize it by name. A book to strengthen both mind and spine.

– Michael Knowles, Host of The Michael Knowles Show

About the Author

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor at City Journal, and the 2005 recipient of the Bradley Prize. Mac Donald received a BA from Yale University, an MA from Cambridge University, and a JD from Stanford University. Her work has covered a range of topics, from higher education and immigration to policing and race relations. Mac Donald’s writing has appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York Times. She is the author of several critically acclaimed books, including The Diversity Delusion and the New York Times bestseller The War on Cops.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BX4RLKCF
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ DW Books (April 18, 2023)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 18, 2023
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 917 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 377 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 555 ratings

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Heather Mac Donald

Heather Mac Donald

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Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. Mac Donald’s work at City Journal has canvassed a range of topics, including higher education, immigration, policing and “racial” profiling, homelessness and homeless advocacy, criminal-justice reform, and race relations. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The New Criterion. Mac Donald's newest book, The War on Cops (2016), warns that raced-based attacks on the criminal-justice system, from the White House on down, are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk.

Other previous works include The Burden of Bad Ideas (2001), a collection of Mac Donald’s City Journal essays, details the effects of the 1960s counterculture’s destructive march through America’s institutions. In The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan than Today’s (2007), coauthored with Victor Davis Hanson and Steven Malanga, she chronicles the effects of broken immigration laws and proposes a practical solution to securing the country’s porous borders. In Are Cops Racist? (2010), another City Journal anthology, Mac Donald investigates the workings of the police, the controversy over so-called racial profiling, and the anti-profiling lobby’s harmful effects on black Americans.

A nonpracticing lawyer, Mac Donald clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and was an attorney-advisor in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a volunteer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She has testified before numerous U.S. House and Senate Committees. In 1998, Mac Donald was appointed to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s task force on the City University of New York. In 2004, she received the Civilian Valor Award from the New Jersey State Law Enforcement Officers. In 2008, Mac Donald received the Integrity in Journalism Award from the New York State Shields, as well as the Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration from the Center for Immigration Studies. In 2012, she received the Quill & Badge Award for Excellence in Communication from the International Union of Police Associations.

A frequent guest on Fox News, CNN, and other TV and radio programs, Mac Donald holds a B.A. in English from Yale University, graduating with a Mellon Fellowship to Cambridge University, where she earned an M.A. in English and studied in Italy through a Clare College study grant. She holds a J.D. from Stanford University Law School.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
555 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the book a good read with insightful, unequivocal, and worrisome content. They also describe the writing style as well-written, witty, and humorous. Readers also mention that the book pulls no punches as to its sad implications.

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ContentWriting styleReading experienceIntelligence
21 customers mention "Content"21 positive0 negative

Customers find the content insightful, well-documented, and convicting. They also say the truth has a force of its own, and the data is overwhelming and staggering.

"As with The Diversity Delusion, this book is well documented and organized, written in a clear but sophisticated style..." Read more

"...end up on a black list for reviewing this book but the data is overwhelming and staggering and needs to be heard and the actual truth considered...." Read more

"...It is data and fact based and difficult to ignore." Read more

"...Although not perfect, the book is thought provoking...." Read more

7 customers mention "Writing style"7 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing style very well written, witty, and humorous. They also say the book pulls no punches as to its sad content.

"...this book is well documented and organized, written in a clear but sophisticated style (thank goodness for an integrated online dictionary!),..." Read more

"...Very insightful, unequivocal, unapologetic. Very concerning." Read more

"...dangerous territory, and Ms. McDonald’s book is very timely and well written." Read more

"Beautifully written with perfect transitioning.The book may be hurtful for some, but fully footnoted. No argument there!..." Read more

5 customers mention "Reading experience"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book a good read, but say it's somewhat lengthy in the arts area.

"...A very good read, hard to put down, well worth the tim." Read more

"Good book, somewhat lengthy in the arts area but overall an objective look at the treatment of equity in society...." Read more

"Great read" Read more

"Excellent book. A timely warning.Horrible state of the nation. This must change and soon, or all is lost." Read more

3 customers mention "Intelligence"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book smart and right on target.

"Heather is smart, and right on target. This book should be read by everyone in order to understand the world that the "mainstream " media ignores...." Read more

"She’s the brainiest, best informed, and most persuasive voice out there when it comes to third-rail subjects like race, crime, and meritocracy, and..." Read more

"Truth teller, Heather Mac is smart, disciined and quitr courageous in all its good meaning and her well-cited references are well placed" Read more

Top reviews from the United States

Scott Sanchez
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read
Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2024
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Enjoyed listening
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David M. Johnson
5.0 out of 5 stars Well documented, convicting, entertaining, hard to put down
Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2023
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As with The Diversity Delusion, this book is well documented and organized, written in a clear but sophisticated style (thank goodness for an integrated online dictionary!), witty, even humorous, but pulls no punches as to its sad implications. As a university professor, I appreciate the attention to detailed development of her arguments, as well as the thorough referencing. I read the “poor” evaluations and can understand that someone on the “other” side of these issues would not appreciate her conclusions, but I cannot understand anyone claiming that her arguments are not well founded by the evidence. I especially disagree with anyone who says there is “nothing knew” in this book, unless the reviewer is himself expert in the topic, or believes a point can be made with only one or two points of evidence.

I teach in a conservative college (Business) within a historically conservative university where I have seen Wokeness and CRT rear its head in recent years, particularly in Humanities, Communication, and Religion. I read on both sides of the topic to understand the others’ perspectives, and to be in a position to challenge them to understand my perspectives as well.

A very good read, hard to put down, well worth the tim.
25 people found this helpful
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tired
5.0 out of 5 stars immensely important book!
Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2024
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This author has expended great effort to understand the disaster of identity politics and to compile the data that illuminates the truth of her descriptions. The citizens that love this country and understand the benefits its form of government provides are duty bound to understand the information in this book and to stand up in any way available to them to support the actions the author describes. Speak up and stand up America!
5 people found this helpful
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David Small
5.0 out of 5 stars Eye opening
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2024
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This book is tough to read as it details the creeping loss of our color blind society. It sadly logs the loss of sanity and reason throughout our culture and our politics.
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R P.
4.0 out of 5 stars When Race Trumps Merit
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2024
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Good book, somewhat lengthy in the arts area but overall an objective look at the treatment of equity in society. Much remains to be done but Heather Mac Donald in this book and others belies the narrative of politics and the media, she brings receipts as always. Very much enjoy her writings
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Dash Manchette
5.0 out of 5 stars Our new philosophy, guiding us ever downward
Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2023
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This book by Heather MacDonald would deserve praise and a wide audience if for only this: it clearly and unambiguously identifies the noxious concept of “disparate impact” as the driving force behind the racial insanity currently guiding our nation. First developed in the law through the Griggs v. Duke Power Co. decision by the Supreme Court, which held that color-blind standards in employment could still be found to violate civil rights law if they disproportionately affected minorities, the concept has escaped to the wider society and now is the prism through which race is viewed. As MacDonald documents, this view is now not only predominant, but unquestionable, in sectors of our society that actually matter.

Breaking the book down into sections on science and medicine, culture and arts, and, best known and most important to a functioning society, law and order, MacDonald demonstrates time and again how large and important institutions, from medical journals, medical schools, scientific foundations, art museums, police agencies and the law, have abandoned their commitments to their core functions, substituted race as the sine qua non of their fields, and have viewed any racial discrepancy as per se proof of racism, past or present. This view has now taken hold so strongly that questioning it, even from the perspective of one committed to that hazy concept of “racial justice,” is essentially career suicide. Other explanations, especially those that might suggest that blacks have some responsibility for their own lives, the culture they create, and the neighborhoods they live in, is akin to questioning the “Great Leap Forward” under Mao. As MacDonald puts it, “[t]he concept of disparate impact has been weaponized and turbocharged.”

And as MacDonald shows, those other explanations better fit the disparities we see. From educational achievement to antisocial behavior to the dearth of qualified blacks at the level necessary to fill all the token slots at corporations and orchestras, the idea that such institutions are in some way keeping blacks back would be laughable if it were not so disastrous.

Things are so bad that a physician-scientist lost her NIH funding for a drug trial because there were not enough blacks in the trial population – despite blacks rarely developing that form of cancer in the first place! Apparently, no, white lives do not matter. The 80+ docents at the Art Institute of Chicago, volunteering their time to guide little kids through the arts, were canned and replaced by six part-time (and paid) employees who better reflected the “diversity” of the community. Apparently inculcating an appreciation of the arts into school children does not matter either. And of course, as we all know, a disproportionate number of blacks arrested and incarcerated just has to be replaced with ‘reform’ measures that embolden criminals – despite blacks suffering the most for it. So, no, apparently even black lives do not matter, at least not when they are in the way of our new guiding philosophy.

MacDonald concludes by laying it on the line. Western civilization created the pinnacle of innovation, science, art, and political philosophy. That will all be swept aside if disparate impact continues its long march through them.
47 people found this helpful
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Dave L.
5.0 out of 5 stars The truth that will sicken and infuriate you must wake up to
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2024
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Heather MacDonald, as usual, is incredibly articulate. You might need to bring a dictionary. She describes in accurate detail the actual events taking place in the name of the new anti white racism known as DEI. The author reveals the destructive policies, the self flagulation, the canceling of the highest achievements of Western culture, the swapping out of the best and brightest of us in favor of placing idiots in charge. That is as long as they are of the correct race, regardless of how useless, incompetent, low iQ and harmful the result. She shows examples where the most important leadership positions held by those once running the engine of our advanced society are now filled with untouchable DEI hire activists seeking to end and erase the highest achievements of the Western nations. The book describes the current sacrifice of all Western virtue on the altar of our new national religion, "DEI." Like a modern version of the fable:
"The Emperor has no clothes." She bravely states what is obviously apparent to all, but few besides Heather Macdonald dare even mention.
As those who do speak the truth risk Orwellian "wrong think" and "face crime" repercussions.
A wake-up call if there ever was one to stand up to the Anti white racism gone out of control. Sickening as you read the consequences due to the fear and failure by weak men to stand up to this modern tyranny.
8 people found this helpful
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Steve Cushner
5.0 out of 5 stars The smartest woman in America !!!
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2024
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Everything she writes and says is solid gold ❤️
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Top reviews from other countries

Bo
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book
Reviewed in Canada on January 15, 2024
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I highly recommend this book it's beautifully written and the author is not being concerned with being cancelled and she shouldn't be it's all facts and figures
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Rob Mallows
5.0 out of 5 stars Super-informative
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 12, 2024
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When the US sneezes, the UK catches a cold, and we've currently caught the race influenza from the States, as this author illustrates well in a sobering and well researched book. She successfully slices up every single argument the cultural marxists present as operating in the interests of "fairness", and gives numerous examples from work and education of where the people most damaged by these new imposed norms of behaviour are the very ones that they are meant to help. Eye-opening in every sense of the word, to understand the insanities of the modern workplace, this book is a useful primer.
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David Maywald
5.0 out of 5 stars At last there is a brave voice for telling the truth
Reviewed in Australia on October 10, 2023
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An explosive book that consciously dives into controversy. Full of truth-telling that challenges the prevailing political discourse. It is enlightening, provocative, refreshing.

“Absent some form of unfairness, it is assumed that the racial demographics of every institution would match that of the population at large... The possibility that such racial disparities reflect the actual distribution of skills or differences in behavior is taboo.”

“The underrepresentation of blacks in many professions is the result of the unequal distribution of skills, not of bias. Sixty-six percent of black twelfth graders nationally were “below basic” in twelfth-grade math skills in 2019, as measured by the National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam.”

New York mayor Eric Adams “would perform an enormous public service if he repudiated disparate impact thinking. Such repudiation will require telling the truth about black crime, which no elected official has been willing to do.”

“Blacks going about their quotidian chores in inner-city areas do have reason to fear, but the threat is not from white supremacists. It is from other blacks… The typical mass shooter in America is not a white supremacist. He is black and either retaliating for a previous shooting or impulsively reacting to a current dispute.”

Heather Mac Donald points out that medical training has been dumbed down, with the removal of core material to make way for courses on diversity and equity. She argues that this harms patients, due to lower standards of competence.

She is particularly passionate about the diminished standards in art, music, and culture:

“The attack against classical music is worth examining in some detail, for it reveals the logic that has been turned against nearly every aspect of Western culture over the last few years. The logic displays a hatred of beauty, a brittle intolerance of the past, and a self-righteous certainty that the orthodoxies of the present are uniquely just.“

“Western civilization contains too much beauty and grandeur, too much achievement, and too much innovation – from advances in the sciences to the blessings of republican self-government – to be lost without a fight.”

Mac Donald decries the regressive and anti-intellectual approaches being pushed through policing, government, education, & society:

“Instead, we are unwinding every objective standard of conduct and achievement – whether it’s the criminal code or academic proficiency requirements for school and employment – if enforcing that standard has a disparate impact on blacks.”

After having done Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to excess perhaps what we need now is less DEI and more EMC (Equality, Merit, and Colourblindness).
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David Maywald
5.0 out of 5 stars At last there is a brave voice for telling the truth
Reviewed in Australia on October 10, 2023
An explosive book that consciously dives into controversy. Full of truth-telling that challenges the prevailing political discourse. It is enlightening, provocative, refreshing.

“Absent some form of unfairness, it is assumed that the racial demographics of every institution would match that of the population at large... The possibility that such racial disparities reflect the actual distribution of skills or differences in behavior is taboo.”

“The underrepresentation of blacks in many professions is the result of the unequal distribution of skills, not of bias. Sixty-six percent of black twelfth graders nationally were “below basic” in twelfth-grade math skills in 2019, as measured by the National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam.”

New York mayor Eric Adams “would perform an enormous public service if he repudiated disparate impact thinking. Such repudiation will require telling the truth about black crime, which no elected official has been willing to do.”

“Blacks going about their quotidian chores in inner-city areas do have reason to fear, but the threat is not from white supremacists. It is from other blacks… The typical mass shooter in America is not a white supremacist. He is black and either retaliating for a previous shooting or impulsively reacting to a current dispute.”

Heather Mac Donald points out that medical training has been dumbed down, with the removal of core material to make way for courses on diversity and equity. She argues that this harms patients, due to lower standards of competence.

She is particularly passionate about the diminished standards in art, music, and culture:

“The attack against classical music is worth examining in some detail, for it reveals the logic that has been turned against nearly every aspect of Western culture over the last few years. The logic displays a hatred of beauty, a brittle intolerance of the past, and a self-righteous certainty that the orthodoxies of the present are uniquely just.“

“Western civilization contains too much beauty and grandeur, too much achievement, and too much innovation – from advances in the sciences to the blessings of republican self-government – to be lost without a fight.”

Mac Donald decries the regressive and anti-intellectual approaches being pushed through policing, government, education, & society:

“Instead, we are unwinding every objective standard of conduct and achievement – whether it’s the criminal code or academic proficiency requirements for school and employment – if enforcing that standard has a disparate impact on blacks.”

After having done Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to excess perhaps what we need now is less DEI and more EMC (Equality, Merit, and Colourblindness).
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Talushkin
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book; well researched asnd well written
Reviewed in Canada on May 25, 2023
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I just finished this book. I found it both sad and frightening. So much is wrong in our Universities that perhaps we should start all over and go back to "teaching" rather than"indoctrinating". Return to merit and reward those who earn things rather than those who demand things.
Heather Mac Donald apparently cares deeply about this loss of "scholarship" and what it is doing to students. I agree with her, we need to rid our schools of those priviledged mediocrities who foster division and resentment.
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Martin Fan
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent perspective
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2024
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If you’re wondering why universities and academia seem to have lost their way, why eminent thinkers have been bullied into silence and cancelled, this honest and articulate author is a must read. The implications are being felt at all levels of society and the most recent being the debacle that is Harvard right upto the highest levels of government.
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