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Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality
A New York Times Notable Book for 2011
Since the 1960s, ideas developed during the civil rights movement have been astonishingly successful in fighting overt discrimination and prejudice. But how successful are they at combating the whole spectrum of social injustice — including conditions that aren't directly caused by bigotry? How do they stand up to segregation, for instance — a legacy of racism, but not the direct result of ongoing discrimination? It's tempting to believe that civil rights litigation can combat these social ills as efficiently as it has fought blatant discrimination.
In Rights Gone Wrong, Richard Thompson Ford, author of the New York Times Notable Book The Race Card, argues that this is seldom the case. Civil rights do too much and not enough: opportunists use them to get a competitive edge in schools and job markets, while special-interest groups use them to demand special privileges. Extremists on both the left and the right have hijacked civil rights for personal advantage. Worst of all, their theatrics have drawn attention away from more serious social injustices.
Ford, a professor of law at Stanford University, shows us the many ways in which civil rights can go terribly wrong. He examines newsworthy lawsuits with shrewdness and humor, proving that the distinction between civil rights and personal entitlements is often anything but clear. Finally, he reveals how many of today's social injustices actually can't be remedied by civil rights law, and demands more creative and nuanced solutions. In order to live up to the legacy of the civil rights movement, we must renew our commitment to civil rights, and move beyond them.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published September 27, 2011
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444 people want to read
About the author
Richard Thompson Ford
10 books31 followersRichard Thompson Ford is the George E. Osborne Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. He has published regularly on the topics of civil rights, constitutional law, race relations, and antidiscrimination law. He is a regular contributor to Slate and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the author of Racial Culture: A Critique, The Race Card and Rights Gone Wrong.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 27, 2012
The title and description of this book are misleading. The book is not about how the civil rights legal framework undermines the struggle for equality. The majority of the book is the author's oversimplification of discrimination issues in an intellectually dishonest way. He never mentions strict or intermediate scrutiny or rational review, which, as essential parts of the civil rights legal framework, bear mentioning since he is purporting to critique their efficacy in achieving equality. The author also never draws a distinction between discrimination by public and private entities, a huge lapse. These lapses, plus a few cases he brings up repeatedly throughout the book (like banning ladies night at a nightclub), contribute to an impression that the civil rights legal framework makes it illegal to ever draw distinctions based on factors like race or gender, which is completely untrue.
It's as if the author recorded his random thoughts, transcribed them, and the result is this published book. For example, he tries to draw a distinction between what he considers legitimate disabilities, deafness, and illegitimate ones, ADHD, and suggests that students with the latter should not be entitled to special education services. He thinks that many students would benefit from the educational accommodations that special education students get (I agree with this) and therefore, students with disabilities like ADHD shouldn't be entitled to special education services because it means there are less resources to provide these services to everyone (I don't agree with this). First of all, he is not a medical professional, so I don't know how he has the expertise to determine what a legitimate and illegitimate disability is. Secondly, the fact that many students would benefit from multimodal teaching strategies certainly doesn't mean that there aren't some kids who still need additional support. Another example of the author's half baked ideas are his attack of class action litigation because individuals who weren't clearly harmed benefit, but he admits that it's too expensive for individual plaintiffs to sue on their own. That's how he leaves it - no suggestions for how those injured could actually be compensated or how those injuries could be avoided, just a critique of how class actions aren't perfect. Well, then tell us your preferred alternative!
From time to time, the author does bring up interesting points like whether the Brown v Board of Ed Court contemplated decisions like that in Seattle/Louisville where school districts aiming to promote integration were essentially not allowed to do so because race was too salient of a factor in their school assignment policies (this is a gross oversimplification, but is the author's point in bringing it up). Unfortunately, the author fails to propose any solutions to this "failure" of the civil rights legal framework. In fact, he dedicates only a few pages at the very end of the book to say that there should be some kind of federal regulatory agency that enforces civil rights, but fails to address how this could be politically feasible or even legal!
The book is terribly written and edited. It reads like the author took a bunch of things he'd previously written and pieced them together and it somehow missed the editing desk on its way to publication.
That said, the purported thesis is a really interesting one and I had some interesting conversations about that, which is why I rated this book 2 stars instead of 1. I really hope that someone actually writes the book this author claims to have written.
PS Something else very strange about this book is that the reviews on the back of the book all seem to be about his other book, The Race Card - another editing failure perhaps.
It's as if the author recorded his random thoughts, transcribed them, and the result is this published book. For example, he tries to draw a distinction between what he considers legitimate disabilities, deafness, and illegitimate ones, ADHD, and suggests that students with the latter should not be entitled to special education services. He thinks that many students would benefit from the educational accommodations that special education students get (I agree with this) and therefore, students with disabilities like ADHD shouldn't be entitled to special education services because it means there are less resources to provide these services to everyone (I don't agree with this). First of all, he is not a medical professional, so I don't know how he has the expertise to determine what a legitimate and illegitimate disability is. Secondly, the fact that many students would benefit from multimodal teaching strategies certainly doesn't mean that there aren't some kids who still need additional support. Another example of the author's half baked ideas are his attack of class action litigation because individuals who weren't clearly harmed benefit, but he admits that it's too expensive for individual plaintiffs to sue on their own. That's how he leaves it - no suggestions for how those injured could actually be compensated or how those injuries could be avoided, just a critique of how class actions aren't perfect. Well, then tell us your preferred alternative!
From time to time, the author does bring up interesting points like whether the Brown v Board of Ed Court contemplated decisions like that in Seattle/Louisville where school districts aiming to promote integration were essentially not allowed to do so because race was too salient of a factor in their school assignment policies (this is a gross oversimplification, but is the author's point in bringing it up). Unfortunately, the author fails to propose any solutions to this "failure" of the civil rights legal framework. In fact, he dedicates only a few pages at the very end of the book to say that there should be some kind of federal regulatory agency that enforces civil rights, but fails to address how this could be politically feasible or even legal!
The book is terribly written and edited. It reads like the author took a bunch of things he'd previously written and pieced them together and it somehow missed the editing desk on its way to publication.
That said, the purported thesis is a really interesting one and I had some interesting conversations about that, which is why I rated this book 2 stars instead of 1. I really hope that someone actually writes the book this author claims to have written.
PS Something else very strange about this book is that the reviews on the back of the book all seem to be about his other book, The Race Card - another editing failure perhaps.
October 4, 2015
A very good report listing examples of where the interpretation of human rights turned into an appeal for privilege, advantage or downright fraud.
October 9, 2012
Very interesting, totally new perspective on a topic that's dear to me. Whether I agree with the author or not is beside the point - it was thought-provoking and that's what I want out of my non-fiction.
January 24, 2012
My rating here is definitely following the Goodreads rubric: it was ok. I initally wanted to give it 3 stars, but I saw that was listed as "I liked it," and I really wouldn't go that far. Some of the ideas introduced were really interesting and well worth thinking about, but I found the writing (and reasoning) to be sloppy. Still, if the topic of the book sounds interesting to you, there's a decent chance you'll be glad you read it once you've finished it.
August 24, 2012
It was like reading a news paper feature. So I discarded it. I was hoping something along the lines with 'Lucifer Effect'. Frowned upon, because lulled me with dubious title.
October 12, 2012
Kind of an interesting thesis, that framing social-justice efforts in a legal "rights" mode has perverse, counterproductive effects and often isn't the best way to achieve equality. Finding instances of seemingly trivial issues dragged clunkily through the courts isn't too hard (he must have a friend who complains bitterly about "ladies' night" at bars as discrimination against men, as this issue arises often), but to his credit he also takes on tougher cases (school districts' spending on special ed, sex discrimination class action suit against Wal-Mart, even Brown v. Board of Education and school desegregation).
Makes some good points -- one straightforward example being that it's much easier, and perhaps as a result much more common, to sue for discrimination (e.g., by age) in retention or promotion cases than in hiring cases, which sets up a perverse incentive for employers -- if you want to cover your behind legally, you're better off not hiring old people rather than hiring them and running the risk that you'll end up in trouble if you ever hire or fail to promote them.
I guess I could have given it 3 stars. What disappointed me about the book is the vague, uninspiring nature of his suggested alternative to the rights-based framework. The two most commonly appearing phrases in the book it seemed were "common sense" and "common decency". If we could count on bank loan officers, landlords, personnel people, schools, the people who design and pay for buildings with or without accessibility, etc. etc. etc. to promote equality on the basis of their common sense and common decency, there wouldn't be so much discrimination to worry about in the first place.
Makes some good points -- one straightforward example being that it's much easier, and perhaps as a result much more common, to sue for discrimination (e.g., by age) in retention or promotion cases than in hiring cases, which sets up a perverse incentive for employers -- if you want to cover your behind legally, you're better off not hiring old people rather than hiring them and running the risk that you'll end up in trouble if you ever hire or fail to promote them.
I guess I could have given it 3 stars. What disappointed me about the book is the vague, uninspiring nature of his suggested alternative to the rights-based framework. The two most commonly appearing phrases in the book it seemed were "common sense" and "common decency". If we could count on bank loan officers, landlords, personnel people, schools, the people who design and pay for buildings with or without accessibility, etc. etc. etc. to promote equality on the basis of their common sense and common decency, there wouldn't be so much discrimination to worry about in the first place.
June 23, 2017
Reading this book I really appreciated how well Ford explains legal concepts / jargon in an easy-to-understand way, and I definitely think he makes convincing arguments with regard to how pop-activism and misuse of asserting one's "inalienable rights" have contradicted the sentiments/laws which the Civil Rights Movement first tried to instill. His analysis too of the ACTUAL impacts of Brown Vs Board of Education (and how later Supreme Court decisions came to sabotage Brown's aims) is quite telling... I won't spoil it here but just encourage those interested to read the book!
November 16, 2024
To be fair, a lot of shit has gone down since this was published. Regardless, I found this to be very under-researched and Under-developed from the beginning. Considering I do a lot of work with policy on IDEA, it didn't take long for me to recognize the failure of Ford to research anything against his beliefs. (FYI a big part of IDEA is service provision in natural environments, therefore any differential treatment that isn't necessary due to a child's developmental difference is genuinely against the law...) but I digress!
In an age where information is shared constantly, and people are getting facts from uninformed sources, I'm kind of sad I even read this. And sad that other people probably will too.
In an age where information is shared constantly, and people are getting facts from uninformed sources, I'm kind of sad I even read this. And sad that other people probably will too.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews