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The Minority Rights Revolution, by John D. Skrentny. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. 473 pp. $35.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-674-00899-5.
This valuable book consists of two distinct parts. Three quarters of the pages concern the development from 1965 to 1975 of affirmative action policies aimed at proportionate representation of blacks in employment, business ownership, and university admissions, and the extension of similar or related policies to other groups defined officially as minorities. The remaining quarter is about the prior growth of what the author calls "difference-blind" or "classically liberal" principles starting in the 1940s.
Skrentny never formally defines the compelling term "minority rights revolution," but seems to restrict it to affirmative action policies, and to refer to earlier changes from discrimination toward difference-blind principles as "pre-history." This is confusing, since the entire period from the 1940s can be characterized as a revolution in the rights and voices of minorities, including some minorities that have not been the beneficiaries of affirmative action. However, the usage does not diminish the important contribution of Skrentny's subtly argued and richly documented chapters on affirmative action nor, as noted below, the somewhat less satisfying chapters on the earlier change toward difference-blind principles.
The author shows how the attempt to end racial discrimination evolved almost seamlessly into affirmative action policies. In the mid-1960s the agency created by the 1964 Civil Rights Act to combat discrimination in employment found glaring discrepancies between the racial composition at several manufacturing plants and the composition of the surrounding regions, and it...