The New Color Line
Readers who find attacks onrecentcivil rights laws and regulations too mild will relish Roberts and Stratton's shifting of the debate back to the 1950s. "The demise of liberalism" and "the assault on freedom of conscience" have their roots, the authors argue, inBrownv.Board of Educationand the 1964 Civil Rights Act: "Democracy gave way to judicial and regulatory edicts, and persuasion gave way to coercion." In their defense of democracy, majority rule, and goodwill as the vital bulwarks of a liberal social order that must be rescued from decades of judicial dictatorship and "the proliferation of privilege," Roberts and Stratton take shots at everyone from Gunnar Myrdal to Lani Guinier, but the venom they heap on "critical race theory" legal scholars in particular--comparing them to anti-Semitic proto-Nazis--marks this analysis as more extreme than it may at first appear. Curiously, Roberts and Stratton seem not to notice that quotas and privileges were essential tools in the distribution of wealth and power in the U.S. long before Earl Warren was born. Popular subject, expect demand.Mary Carroll