Getting beyond affirmative action: thinking about racial inequality in the twenty-first century.

• Author: Selmi, Michael

THE MINER'S CANARY: ENLISTING RACE, RESISTING POWER, TRANSFORMING DEMOCRACY. By Lani Guinier** & Gerald Torres.*** Harvard University Press 2002. 302 pp.

THE ANATOMY OF RACIAL INEQUALITY. By Glenn C. Loury. ([dagger]) Harvard University Press 2001. 169 pp.

INTRODUCTION

As we embark upon the twenty-first century, any book addressing race relations and the persistence of inequality must meet two challenges. The book must find a way to go beyond affirmative action, acknowledging that before long, race-based affirmative action will no longer be able to do the heavy-lifting of racial policy that we have relied on for the last two decades. Second, the book must say something new--something provocative that avoids cliches and pat policy positions and ultimately contributes to our understanding of the persistence of racial inequality. While these challenges may seem easy to meet, time and again they prove daunting for many scholars.

The two books under review have both been much anticipated. Lani Guinier was first thrust onto the national scene when she was selected and later abandoned by President Bill Clinton to be his Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. (1) Guinier has subsequently been one of the most prominent public commentators on civil rights issues and was recently appointed the first African American female professor at Harvard Law School. This book represents her first sustained academic argument on the future of civil rights since her Clinton debacle. As an academic, Gerald Torres has long been associated with critical race theory, and he was also considered for a position in the Clinton Administration as an Assistant Attorney General for Environmental Affairs, but withdrew his nomination after concerns about his writings and other issues surfaced. (2) The combination of these two powerful and prominent voices is tantalizing in and of itself, offering the promise of a much-needed new vision for the civil rights struggle.

Glenn Loury's story is a bit different but equally enticing. Throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, Loury was a prominent African American conservative public intellectual, although his views were always a bit more iconoclastic than political labels allow. He has since undergone a very public transformation from conservative black spokesperson to moderate liberal supporter of affirmative action and other race-conscious programs, and this book marks his coming out of sorts. (3) As is true of Guinier and Torres, this book represents Loury's first extended treatment of his recent views, and in fact, this is Loury's first book in a career that spans more than two decades. (4)

Based on the criteria set forth above, both books can be labeled successes, as neither obsesses over affirmative action and both endeavor to offer new and provocative insights into the continuing debates over racial injustice and, in the case of Guinier and Torres, into injustice that affects other minority groups, in particular Latinos. Guinier and Torres center their book around the concept they label "political race," a concept that stands for the possibility of multicultural coalitions built around the idea of race. (5) There is less of an organizing theme to Loury's book, though he is principally concerned with explaining the persistence of discrimination through his economist's eyes, while developing the idea of how racial stigma, a legacy he traces to slavery but with contemporary manifestations, helps explain why we have not made more progress on matters of civil rights.

At the same time, neither book turns out to be as fresh as a reader would like, and both prove disappointing, in large part because both the promise and anticipation were so high. At critical junctures, both books retreat to old issues and arguments, and both fail to come to grips with many difficult issues and questions that permeate their analyses. In this respect, the books fail to move the dialogue on racial justice forward as much as they could have, and indeed what is most disappointing about the books is that they fail to execute or persuade on the intriguing ideas that abound between their covers.

In this Review, I will initially explore and summarize the argument of the books, focusing on what I consider to be their major contributions, while having little to say about issues that the authors have either explored previously or which ultimately contribute only marginally to their arguments. (6) While seeking to explicate their arguments, I will also highlight their limitations, and in the final part of the Review, I will suggest ways in which we might take these books as a starting point in what I describe as an emerging dialogue on race--a dialogue that may be able to breach the walls of identity politics by emphasizing the intersection of race and class as a way of both building the multiracial coalition of which Guinier and Torres dream, and pursuing Loury's desire to improve the life chances of those African Americans who have been perpetually and unjustly consigned to a world with few opportunities and much despair.

1. GLENN LOURY ON STEREOTPYING AND STIGMA

   Loury's book, originally delivered as the DuBois lectures at Harvard University, is an extended meditation on racial inequities and injustice in America. His book is organized around three axioms and two related concepts. The axioms (his term) are: (1) race is socially constructed; (2) the enduring racial disadvantages African Americans face are not the product of innate human capacities; (3) there is an awareness of African Americans as "the other," which he attributes to the legacy of slavery. (7) Related to these axioms, and comprising the focus of the book, are the concepts of "racial stigma" and "racial stereotypes," two concepts that are not only closely connected with the three axioms noted above but are also intricately linked together. Building on the work of Erving Goffman, (8) Loury defines racial stigma as an "identity unreflectively imputed to someone by observers who, not being privy to extensive idiosyncratic information, draw conclusions about a person's deeper qualities on the basis of the easily observable indicators that may lie at hand." (9) It is the sense of African Americans as the "other" that gives rise to the racial stigma, which Loury sees as haunting African Americans at every turn.

   Although related, his emphasis on racial stereotyping can also be seen as running contrary to the force of stigma, at least in some ways. Here Loury's transformation is in full view because even though he reverts to his economics training to define racial stereotyping as a form of rational discrimination, one where it is often reasonable to make racial distinctions when other evidence is not available, he also notes that even where seemingly rational these racial distinctions often "reflect modes of social cognition subtly biased against blacks." (10) This latter observation, which is central to his argument, highlights one of the limitations of Loury's book. Although this point is new for Loury, it is hardly a new one for others. Outside of the limited world of neoclassical economics in which Loury used to toil, the position on which he has now settled regarding the presence of subtle biases can fairly be described as the reigning view within academic circles on the persistence of discrimination. (11)

   Loury begins his analysis by emphasizing both the social construction and reality of race: Although there may not be any biological basis for the concept of race, there are widely shared social classifications which give meaning and force to race in our lives. (12) Early in the book, Loury's interest centers on what he defines as "self-confirming stereotypes,"--those actions that have the effect of producing the expected outcomes, what are akin to the sociological concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy. (13) He illustrates this concept with a series of examples, the most interesting of which (because it appears counterintuitive) involves the difficulty African American men often encounter when hailing cabs on the street. Loury suggests that many young African American men will become discouraged by the prospect of a long wait to hail a cab and will thus seek out other means of transportation, such as the subway or a taxi stand. Robbers, on the other hand, "are less easily deterred than are the law-abiding," and thus this form of adverse selection will likely lead to a "set of young black men actually seen to be hailing taxis after dark [that] may well come to contain a noticeably larger-than-average fraction of robbers, precisely the circumstance presumed by the drivers in the first place." (14) Loury extends his discussion to other situations, including bargaining for car prices, the workplace, and education, where African Americans adjust to negative societal expectations in a way that confirms those expectations.

   But if these cycles are premised on biased or inaccurate perceptions, a question naturally arises, particularly for one trained as an economist: Why do they persist? On this question, Loury proffers a theory grounded in social psychology but which ultimately rests on a common-sensical foundation. The biased views persist in large measure because they comport with a person's "inchoate sense of the natural order of things" and thus are not seen or experienced as in need of revision or exploration. (15) To this, Loury adds that to the extent the racially stereotypic views are widely shared, they will be more difficult to dislodge because there is a strong incentive "to see the world as others do--not because the benefit of doing so outweighs the cost, but because that is the way of being in the world with these people." (16) As Loury acknowledges, this explanation is not likely to satisfy those attached to a rational-actor model, though his argument can be seen as consistent with that model in two distinct ways. (17) First, it would be...