Making Sense of Desegregation and Affirmative Action

Authors

William W. Van Alstyne, Duke Law SchoolFollow

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

1979

Keywords

desegregation, segregation, affirmative action, school integration, Bakke, Supreme Court

Abstract

This review discusses J. Harvie Wilkinson's "From Brown to Bakke" and its companion work, "Counting by Race: Equality from the Founding Fathers to Bakke and Weber" written by Terry Eastland and William J. Bennett. Wilkinson's work is found to maintain a narrow focus on its specific subject of school desegregation and the Supreme Court, but it suffers from over-exaggeration and an abundance of adornment in his writing style. "Counting" is a provocative piece that asserts the position that the Constitution is still not color-blind, despite what many have proposed, and makes an authoritative argument for such a claim.

Citation

William W. Van Alstyne, Making Sense of Desegregation and Affirmative Action, 57 Texas Law Review 1489-1498 (1979) (reviewing J. Harvie Wilkinson, III From Brown to Bakke--The Supreme Court and School Integration: 1954-1978 (1979), and Terry Eastland & William J Bennett, Counting by Race: Equality from the Founding Fathers to Bakke and Weber (1979))