Group preferences, cultural diversity, and social democracy: Notes toward a theory of affirmative action

Representations

Volumn 55, Issue , 1996, Pages 31-40

  Hollinger, David A ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0009359383     PISSN: 07346018     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/rep.1996.55.1.99p0439l     Document Type: Review

References (14)

1. Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston, 1995), 165
2. The concept of the "ethno-racial pentagon" is developed in David A. Hollinger, Post-ethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York, 1995), from which the next two paragraphs are adapted
3. Steinberg, Turning Back, 165
4. Randall Kennedy, "Yes and No," The American Prospect (Spring 1992): 116
5. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York, 1944), 3-25
6. Orlando Patterson, "Affirmative Action on the Merit System," New York Times, 7 August 1995, A13
7. See, e.g., Abigail Thernstrom, "The Futility of Black Rage," Times Literary Supplement, 10 June 1994, 14
8. For representative comments of Jim Sleeper and Jim Miller, see the symposium "Race & Racism: American Dilemmas Revisited," Salmagundi nos. 104-5 (Fall 1994-Winter 1995), esp. 37-38, 51, 110
9. for Theda Skocpol, see her "The Choice," The American Prospect (Summer 1992): 86-90
10. See also the contributions by Nicholas Mills and Michael Lind to the symposium "Affirmative Action Under Fire," Dissent (Fall 1995): 470-73
11. Paul Sniderman and Thomas Piazza, The Scar of Race (Cambridge, Mass., 1993)
12. Peter Schrag, "So You Want to Be Color-Blind: Alternative Principles for Affirmative Action," American Prospect (Summer 1995): 41. Schrag's discussion of the Immigration Reform Act draws upon the work of Hugh Davis Graham. Schrag's article is one of the most sensible discussions of group preference I have seen. It came to my attention only after this essay was in draft
13. For a refreshingly open discussion of this question with the specific case of law school admissions in mind, see Paul Brest and Miranda Oshige, "Affirmative Action for Whom?" Stanford Law Review 47 (May 1995): 855-900, esp. 900, where the authors conclude that "no other group compares to African Americans in the confluence of the characteristics that argue for inclusion in affirmative action programs."
14. For an example of the kind of society-wide economic analysis in which I believe the debate over group preferences should be more firmly nested, see Edward Luttwak, "Turbo-Charged Capitalism and Its Consequences," London Review of Books (2 November 1995): 6-7