When the first Mexican-American woman was elected to a school board in a Texas county, the board conveniently changed the rules for placing an item on the agenda from support by only one member, to support by two members. Another method excludes minorities from certain deliberations. Black legislators in a joint Louisiana senate and house committee for congressional redistricting were excluded from a secret meeting. Guinier's style of writing is extremely academic. The book is filled with footnotes and citations.
Some paragraphs have a footnote at the end of every sentence.
It would be impossible to read half of the footnotes while maintaining a flow to the reading. The articles of the book are written in 191 pages. Another flaw in Guinier's writing style is that of repetitiveness. The articles were not originally written with the intent of later combining them into one book, so some points or examples are reiterated from one chapter to the next. Guinier's ideas may have created a lot of controversy, but that is only because they have been misinterpreted.