Legal Commentary

?We Live In Racially Interesting Times...?

If you can, i.e., if you are a subscriber to the Claremont Review of Books, be sure to read Abigail Thernstrom?s perceptive review essay of three interesting books: The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, by Richard Thompson Ford; Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal, by Randall Kennedy; and A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can?t Win, by Shelby Steele. She both begins and ends her essay by noting that ?[w]e live in racially interesting times.?

?Old assumptions about white racism and black victimization are still very much alive,,? Thernstrom writes,

but they are finally being challenged by important black writers who see an altered racial landscape and grapple in fresh and interesting ways with the problems it poses. With President Obama and a crop of maverick black authors, we are witnessing what might be called the incredible shrinking of Jesse Jackson and his allies?the civil rights community, the mainstream media, and the politically timid who fear that someone, someday, might play the race card and destroy their careers.

Thus after many decades, the hold of the thought police who stifle dissent from conventional civil rights orthodoxy has clearly been broken. Richard Thompson Ford, professor of law at Stanford University, writes about the concept of discrimination, which by now is in a ?state of crisis.? ?When does a grievance deserve the special and unequivocal condemnation reserved for racism?? he asks. In today?s racially complex setting, the answer is ?getting more convoluted and confusing.? Randall Kennedy, also on the Left but known for his intellectual independence at Harvard Law School, focuses on the notion of the black sellout?blacks as traitors to their race, a charge often leveled at him. And Shelby Steele ... explores the ?complex? biracial identity that he and Barack Obama share. These are important books, and also good reads?written in lively, engaging prose.

Full post as published by Discriminations on February 15, 2009 (boomark / email).