The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy

Rating:
Summary: Timely and bold
Review: A bold call for bringing people together and transforming society. If you are class conscious and anti-racist read this book, it will be worth the challenge.

Rating:
Summary: You are kidding me?
Review: Because it's the best book about race relations in America since Ellison's masterpiece of fifty years ago. By "race relations" I mean blacks and whites, as Ellison would have meant the words. But The Miner's Canary is about much more, it's about all-minority-cultures and whites in America. And in direct opposition to the color-blind solution the Supreme Court has decided the Constitution requires, the book's authors esteem and celebrate and find strength, including political strength, in their separate cultural identities -- including the separate (non-oppressive) cultural identities of whites.

When I put The Miner's Canary down, I wished I had read the Acknowledgments first, then the chapter "by" Torres. This is a difficult book, it has many authors, and the voice I identify as Ms. Guinier's seems sometimes to address grade school students and other times to address law professors. So the book has many levels of analysis, and it treats its central topic -- political race -- from many angles. These are not shortcomings, but they add up to a very demanding book.

The book's real-life examples, however, are all wonderful and all one -- compelling and utterly elucidating. And the long illustration of how Greek democracy in action would look if it followed American districting and apportionment rules is simply surpassing wonderful.

Then there's the book's immediacy. Prominent economic historian Robert Fogel has emphasized the roles of technology and religious activism in America's movements for social justice, relegating progressivism to the status of an adjunct to the latter. The Miner's Canary, on the other hand, puts the struggle for social justice squarely within the politics of progressivism. This is not necessarily inconsistent with Fogel (whatever one thinks of the validity of his argument), assuming Fogel's subject is movements in the past before about 1980 when the Big Sleep set in -- which it is -- and assuming The Miner's Canary is describing developments since about 1980, which it is. The book says something new has been happening, and it started being more than unrelated occurrences about twenty five years ago. This new thing Guinier and Torres call political race.

The ambition, originality and insights of this book far outweigh its difficulties due to multiple voices and an "un-ironed out" presentation. I give it five stars.

Rating:
Summary: This Book Recalls Ellison's Invisible Man
Review: Because it's the best book about race relations in America since Ellison's masterpiece of fifty years ago. By "race relations" I mean blacks and whites, as Ellison would have meant the words. But The Miner's Canary is about much more, it's about all-minority-cultures and whites in America. And in direct opposition to the "color blind solution" the Supreme Court has decided the Constitution requires, the book's authors esteem and celebrate and find strength, including political strength, in their separate cultural identities, including the separate (non-oppressive) cultural identities of whites.

When I put The Miner's Canary down, I wished I had read the Acknowledgments first, then the chapter "by" Torres. It is a difficult book, it has many authors, and the book's voice I identify as Ms. Guinier's seems sometimes to address grade school students and other times to address law professors. So the book has many levels of analysis, and it treats its central topic -- political race -- from many angles. These are not shortcomings, but they add up to a demanding book.

The book's real-life examples are all one -- compelling and utterly elucidating. And the long illustration of how Greek democracy in action would look if it followed American districting and apportionment rules is surpassing wonderful.

Then there's the book's immediacy. Prominent economic historian Robert Fogel has emphasized the roles of technology and religious activism in America's movements for social justice, relegating progressivism to the status of an adjunct to the latter. The Miner's Canary, on the other hand, puts the struggle for social justice squarely within the politics of progressivism. This is not necessarily inconsistent with Fogel (whatever one thinks of the validity of his argument), assuming Fogel's subject is movements in the past before about 1980 when the Big Sleep set in -- which it is -- and assuming The Miner's Canary is describing developments since about 1980 - which it is. The book says something new has been happening, and it started being more than unrelated occurrences about twenty five years ago. This new thing Guinier and Torres call political race.

The ambition, originality and insights of this book far outweigh its difficulties due to multiple voices and an "un-ironed out" presentation. I give it five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Why this book fails
Review: Guiner and Torres write pedantically with little organization or cohesion. Although the anecdotes were interesting, the authors' arguments reek of indolent emotionalism rather than theory and sound policy.

I realize this is a critical review. I try to be fair to all viewpoints, but this vacuous work warrants these harsh words. Gerald Torres was a visiting professor at Harvard, where his indifferent attitude to his own class and examination live on in infamy. He is not proficient at conveying information.

In short, while Torres and Guiner intended to write a mentally stimulating book, this work is instead mind numbing. Spend your money on another book. For alternate reading on race theory, try "Unequal Treatment: A Study in the Neoclassical Theory of Discrimination" by Lundahl and Wadensjo.

Rating:
Summary: You are kidding me?
Review: I know that professors from Harvard and UT are smart, but do they really feel the need to express this in their writing? The entire first chapter of this book is nothing but fluff, using nearly incomprehensible $5 words. The authors do not get their point across in a clear and concise manner and the rest of the book suffers because of this. Do not buy this book.