Rating: 
Summary: Very Comprehensive
Review: D'Souza has written the most comprehensive book on race in America I have ever read. According to D'Souza the foundations of our racial problems begin with cultural relativism advocated in the early part of this century to explain why white countries were so advanced compared to non-white cultures. Cultural relativism eventually allowed the civil rights leadership to break away from their color blind priciple advocated by Martin Luther King to one where the government treats blacks diferrently and gives them preferences. The end result is divided public and black culture which refuses to adopt productive habits like self reliance, tradional family values, and hard work because it views these traits as white. I can't give the book justice with this brief reveiw but he holds no bars. He examines evidence which claims blacks are genetically inferior so read with open mind.
Rating: 
Summary: interesting
Review: Though I don't necessarily agree with everything Danesh D'souza like repealing the civil rights act of 1964 because discriminatin in private employment is still wrong. I also disagree with his idea that free blacks owning slaves was a major problem. Obviously, it was still wrong but free blacks owned about 10,000 accourding to D'souza minor in comparission to slavery as a whole especially a good portion of those slaves were not used for labor but but were family and friends that free blacks bought so they would no longer be in slavery. However, D'souza does bring interesting points that racism may not be the biggest problem facing minorities today and that there are cultural and other problems like poverty, crime, education and one parent households that are larger problems. With that, racism definetely has decreased in American society and minorities do have a great deal of oppurtunities for themselves. In addition, cultural relativism may not hold that much wait considering because most people who believe in cultural relativism could be converted through D'souza logic. THe chapter entitiled Bigotry in Black and White: Can African Americans be racist? does a good job into question black anti-semetism and racism and showing that racism is still racism even if people lack the power to enforce their hatred.
Rating:
Summary: deconstructing race from culture
Review: What makes this such an important work is the author's analytical framework that separates race from culture. Once he has done that, objective discrimination can be made about black culture. Culture is something that one can change while genetic characteristics one cannot. This is a very positive message of hope.
Rating:
Summary: Worthy of the Pulitzer Prize
Review: A balanced and comprehensive study of race, from Ancient Greece to contemporary American society, analyzing its complications and its implications. A magnificent work ... worthy of a Pulitzer.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Conservative Reckoning of American Race Politics
Review: Meticulously documented and skilfully argued, Dinesh D'souza's THE END OF RACISM is an ambitious--at times ackwardly belligerent--attack on multiculturalism.He exposes the fallacious premises of liberal race ideology and proceeds to detail the true cause of black/hispanic underachievement in America: cultural inferiority. While there is certainly a measure of truth to this pronouncement, his automatic assignment of all black social pathologies to cultural factors is scholastically problematic. Some deficiencies--such as those revealed by intelligence tests--have a demonstrable heritable component. Others can be credibly attributed to historical oppression. Neither explanation was adequately refuted by D'Souza. On balance, however, his opinions are intellectually sound. He disrespectfully but honestly reckons the motives and worth of the Race Industry and properly places the burden of progress at the doorstep of the black community. Moreover, his analyses, while pointed, are candidly courageous. Others have documented the technical merit of his observations, but I think any open- minded person will agree with 90% of what Dinesh has to say. I stongly recommend that you read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Mistaken
Review: Was this book well written? Yes. Was it convincing? No. D'Souza apparently has only met one kind of black person and only knows one kind of white person and it mars the book. Is racism as bad as it was 30 years ago? No. The physical dangers that blacks faced from whites are no longer a daily problem but to say that racism is largely a figment of black imagination is to verge on fantasy.
Rating:
Summary: Facts never lie.
Review: I'm reading this book for the second time because it's so well written and just makes plain sense to all who've taken even the slightest interest of the world around them. Not filled with a bunch of inflamatory nonsense, but indisputable facts that are sure to (and ought to) rub any light-headed liberal against his fur. D'Souza lays out the facts whether you like them or not and it's always better to know accurate facts, however disconcerting they may be, than a world view that fits ones sensibilities. You will thoroughly enjoy D'Souza's writing style and appreciate his wealth of knowledge!
Rating: 
Summary: Brahmin in search of a lower western caste
Review: Congratulations to D'Souza for writing yet another thought-provoking, intestinal-churning book. If you retire with this book in hand, don't forget to have easy access to a dose of Phenergan and/or Valium. Nauseating yet addictive! D'Souza's work is clearly a must-read no matter where you fall along the liberal-conservative continuum. For open-minded individuals, it's a painful 566 pages of The White Man's Burden. Nevertheless, among this pile of conservative Caste-oriented thought, he visits the frequently swept-aside issues of African-American internal deficits such as the normalization of illegitimacy and dependency, black-on-black crime, resistance to education, etc. Otherwise, The End of Racism exemplifies how its author is plagued with a complexion-complexed mind. It must be a painful way to live. He supports the view of a racial-genetic hierarchy while he simultaneously argues that blacks should just "get out of the ghetto." There is a stark mismatch between the book's title and it's content. Appropriate title suggestions include "501 Stereotypes of Afircan-American Males Revisited," "Justification for White-Supremacist Thought," and last but not least "The Rationale for Racism." It's a shame. While we are all looking for a solution to our race problem in America, such wasteful fuel is added to the flame of stagnation. We don't need a D'Souza to compile and reiterate page after page a list of shortcomings of lower SES African-Americans. The same can be done for ANY group. We (meaning anyone interested in living in racial harmony) want to hear progressive thought. Where-do-we-go-from-here thinking. NOT "racism is rational because...." The End of Racism simply reads as one's attempt to flex their "cognitive muscle" via the use of circuitous, superfluous language. Nothing less than British-colonized thought; a Brahmin in search of a Western Hemisphere version of a Scheduled Caste.
Rating:
Summary: End of Anti-Racism?
Review: This book does a lot of straight talking about race rarely heard any where today. That's why the author is vilified so much. His conclusions are basically idealistic, liberal ones even though the evidence speaks against such conclusions. He talks about the lower IQ of blacks and how this is largely due to heredity not environment, meaning that is fixed, not changeable. However, he still believes that black civilizational standards can be raised in such areas as crime, illegitimacy, education, and poverty just by some how changing the culture when all these problems are probably caused by low IQs that are unchangeable. The book also explains how scientific racism of the 18th and 19th centuries was a theory that rationally explained why there was such a difference between the advanced Anglo cultures that conquered other less advanced cultures with their superior technologies. He did not explain how a society becomes more advanced than others as far as I can remember. Anyway, a lot of the book blows holes in modern-day egalitarian arguments that say all races are basically equal in cultures and intelligence. ...Still the author believes in the ideals of multicultural society and equality of all races under the law and that we will all be able to live together under such ideals despite our differences and despite historical and present-day hostility.
Rating:
Summary: Hubris and Hucksterism
Review: Dinesh D'Souza is a research fellow at the conservative public policy think tank, American Enterprise Institute. Many of their policy proposals (Robert Borks' excepted) are balanced, but Mr D'Souza's thinking has definitely tanked with this polemic. I am a member of that group that public opinion pollsters describe as 'the majority of white Americans who disagree with preferential treatment for blacks'. For me, this is pragmatic, not racist; it is my conviction that individual effort and merit should be the criteria that decides who succeeds. This is a philosophical position that I find not at all at odds with my support for affirmative action. The fact that I have never experienced reverse discrimination, know of no colleagues that have, and have seen job training programs do wonders in some of the places I've worked, only means some will argue, that my support is narrow and self-centered, or based on angst and white guilt. It's necessary to put the subject into this context - the personal and philosophical, because that is exactly the level at which Mr D'Souza wants to appeal to his readers. He would argue that support for affirmative action is a consequence of white guilt informing public policy. More specifically, only cultural relativists, multiculturalists or more simply, liberals, support the policy. You are not allowed to define your own position. The subtitle of THE END OF RACISM is Principles for a Multiracial Society, which implies that we will be looking at basic truths, laws, assumptions or standards for managing such a society. Instead we are treated to a frontal assault on liberalism as a political philosophy. Fair enough, there are many elements that can be criticized. However, this means that the book's title is camouflage, and a huckster is at work pushing his political philosophy rather than offering public policy prescriptions. What are some of these political and philosophical blocks that the book is built on? CULTURAL RELATIVISM and LIBERALISM. Mr D'Souza says that cultural relativism is "the doctrine that all cultures are considered equal...cultural relativism means that the standards for evaluating a culture come from within...no culture may legitimately impose it's norms or standards on another". Diversity and multiculturalism are used interchangeably. Mr D'Souza tries to obfuscate the issue by not discussing it in terms of the difference between universal and particular values. The problem of liberalism is a conflict between the principles of equal treatment and worth, which are inherently universalistic values, and a claim to special treatment on the basis of ethnicity, which is patently a particularistic value. Paul Sniderman in REACHING BEYOND RACE says it best: "Liberalism's advocacy of ethnic diversity is rooted in principle...It's very awareness that it is faithful to principle...has blinded it to the fact that it has pledged itself to a principle that is -and in the end ought to be- subordinate to it's own universalistic principles". Mr D'Souza would not want to highlight this dialectic within liberalism since it implies that change is possible, and he wishes to portray the philosophy as moribund. Further, his comment that "relativism has now imprisoned liberals in an iron cage that prevents them from acknowledging black pathology" is itself, only a relative statement; one which probably only he holds, as nobody argues that that the high crime, drug plagued, culture of the inner city is the equal to that of the white suburbs. RATIONAL DISCRIMINATION. I do not believe that white Americans are more prone to racism than any other group, here or in any other society. Mr D'Souza however, states that it is "universal, defensible and in some cases even admirable to prefer members of one's own group over strangers." Whereas rational discrimination, (based on a lack of information about the individual being discriminated against)is bigotry and prejudice - it remains a case of immorality at the individual level. Just as white guilt has no place in public policy, neither does 'rational discrimination', where through anonymity at the institutional level, it becomes racism. It would have been preferable to review the book on the strength of it's arguments for race neutral or color-blind public policies but that is difficult. Mr D'Souza dismisses all contending opinions, not with counter analysis but with anecdote. Issues raised in serious works such as THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED are waived aside. As the book goes on the contempt that Mr D'Souza has for those who disagree with him becomes apparent and the condescension with which he views black intellectuals and civil rights leaders is almost palpable. Hubris abounds. Perhaps Mr D'Souza is already familiar with the comment by Columbia University professor Edward Said, who characterized a similar patronizing posture by English novelist V.S. Naipaul, as that of "a white man's nigger" always "looking down." There may be a moral basis for implementing color blind policies, but THE END OF RACISM comes nowhere close to making that argument. It is definitely not the 'definitive' book on race relations; in fact it's not a even a good starting point. There are many other books available such as REACHING BEYOND RACE, THE UNSTEADY MARCH and FACING UP TO THE AMERICAN DREAM.
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