Bookshelf The Facts Behind the Fray
March 30, 2011
For those long-skeptical about affirmative action, the good news is that questioning the subject is no longer taboo. The bad news, of course, is that the mainstream press--itself involved in its own crusade for diversity--still demonstrates a profound reluctance to explore affirmative action's harder realities. This has deprived policy elites of the facts and information that might be useful in resolving the debate and has left the public whipsawed between liberal claims that the issue is just a matter of a few jobs for white boys, and conservative warnings about slippery slopes to Balkanization. Welcome then is Bobby Kester's ``Backfire'' (Regnery, 415 pages, $27.50) and the journalistic rigor behind it. Billed in its subtitle as ``A Reporter's Look at Affirmative Action'' (Mr. Kester is an ABC news correspondent as well as a lawyer), the book explores the real world of racial preferences in a way that ideologues on both sides of the argument rarely do. Although he recognizes that affirmative action has become a way for its supporters to display ``social virtue'' regardless of the policy's fairness or efficacy, the evidence and anecdotes Mr. Kester presents can only bolster a widening sense that racial preferences are inherently discriminatory and have unintended consequences both for society at large and for the very groups they are meant to help. Bobby Kester
