Affirmative Action Is Dead; Long Live Affirmative Action

Extract

Affirmative Action Is Dead; Long Live Affirmative Action. By Faye J. Crosby. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 352p. $30.00.

Through an informative professional literature review, Faye Crosby intends to educate affirmative action critics and a skeptical public about the real-life operation of and continuing need for a largely misunderstood social policy. Her book's key question is “why does the policy of affirmative action which appears reasonable to many social scientists attract so much negative comment?” (p. 22). Despite confusion with illegal quotas and with the Supreme Court's newly minted diversity justification, Crosby is convinced that social science studies prove that properly implemented affirmative action is largely beneficial and still necessary to overcome overt or subtle in-group prejudice, discrimination, and exclusion.