Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law

**By the author of the* New York Times* best-seller *Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word* and, more recently, *The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency* ("Provocative and richly insightful."—Brent Staples, *The New York Times Book Review*; "Excellent."—David Remnick, *The New Yorker*)

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The definitive reckoning with one of the most explosively contentious and sharply divisive issues in American society, a book extraordinary for its cool reason and genuine fairness—at once a recollection of the little-known history of affirmative action and an anatomy of its pros and cons.