Synopses & Reviews
Should government try to remedy persistent racial and ethnic inequalities by establishing and enforcing quotas and other statistical goals? Here is one of the most incisive books ever written on this difficult issue. Nathan Glazer surveys the civil rights tradition in the United States; evaluates public policies in the areas of employment, education, and housing; and questions the judgment and wisdom of their underlying premises--their focus on group rights, rather than individual rights. Such policies, he argues, are ineffective, unnecessary, and politically destructive of harmonious relations among the races.
Updated with a long, new introduction by the author, Affirmative Discrimination will enable citizens as well as scholars to better understand and evaluate public policies for achieving social justice in a multiethnic society.
Review
A tempered, factually argued, vigorous polemic against the predominant drift of public policy on racial issues ... Public issues only infrequently receive serious, sustained arguments of this high order. New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
Affirmative Discrimination will enable citizens as well as scholars to better understand and evaluate public policies for achieving social justice in a multiethnic society.
About the Author
Nathan Glazer is Professor of Education and Sociology, Emeritus, at Harvard University.
Harvard University
Table of Contents
- The Emergence of an American Ethnic Pattern
- Affirmative Action in Employment: From Equal Opportunity to Statistical Parity
- Affirmative Action in Education: The Issue of Busing
- Affirmative Action in Housing: Overcoming Residential Segregation
- The White Ethnic Political Reaction
- Morality, Politics, and the Future of Affirmative Action