Toxic Diversity: Race, Gender, and Law Talk in America

by Dan Subotnik

Overview

Toxic Diversity offers an invigorating view of race, gender, and law in America. Analyzing the work of preeminent legal scholars such as Patricia Williams, Derrick Bell, Lani Guinier, and Richard Delgado, Dan Subotnik argues that race and gender theorists poison our social and intellectual environment by almost deliberately misinterpreting racial interaction and data and turning white males into victimizers. Far from energizing women and minorities, Subotnik concludes, theorists divert their energies from implementing America's social justice agenda.

Insisting, in the words of James Baldwin, that “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,” and that thoughtful Americans regardless of race and gender can handle frank conversations about difficult topics, Subotnik’s critique of race and gender theory pulls no punches as it confronts such inflammatory issues as single parenthood, the merit system in academic and business settings, gender privilege in the classroom, and crime.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814739907
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2005
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	335
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Dan Subotnik is professor of law at Touro College Law Center.

Table of Contents

Preface: Doubt Everything Part I The Signifying Monkey1 Learning to Think about Race and Gender 2 Smelling the Sewers but Not the Flowers 3 The Critical Race Theory Show 4 Race, Gender, Jokes, Thinking, and Feeling 5 The Unbearable Burden of Being Black 6 Pink and Blue Part II The Vagina Monologues7 Chicken Little Goes to Law School 8 The Tall Tales of Women Teachers 9 Unwed Motherhood and Apple Pie Part III Black and Blue10 A Casino Society 11 Crime Stories 12 Conclusion: Eyes on the PrizeAfterword: Final Exam Appendix I: Student Faculty Evaluation Appendix II: Student Questionnaire Appendix III: Christine Farley’s Study Notes Bibliography Name Index Subject Index About the Author 

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A thoughtful critique of identity politics in the nation's law schools. . . . It is the great merit of Mr. Subotnik’s work that he moves us toward a single standard for judging scholarship and thus helps create the conditions for the common enterprise of explaining our social world—and even, if we are lucky, improving it.”-The Wall Street Journal

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“Many outside the universities think that political correctness faded from the campus in the mid-nineties. Dan Subotnik shows that it never went away: it got tenure. This book is beautifully written, consistently enjoyable, and replete with wonderful anecdotes and memorable humor. It is also thoroughly researched and reliable.”
-Christina Hoff Sommers,author of Who Stole Feminism?

“This is the kind of fearless work that will read as common sense a hundred years from now, to readers who will be as perplexed by much of our current race writing as we are today by medieval tracts about alchemy.”
-John McWhorter,author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America

“The left knows how to dish out criticism. Can it take it? With the publication of Toxic Diversity, we'll find out. More subtle and searching than other critiques of critical race theory, critical legal studies, and feminist legal theory, Dan Subotnik’s book poses challenges that all progressives, myself included, will need to consider.”
-Richard Delgado,Professor of Law and Derrick Bell Fellow in Law, University of Pittsburgh Law School

“An entertaining and enlightening excursion into the world of critical race and gender theory. Even those who disagree with Subotnik’s critique will appreciate the value of his analysis. Toxic Diversity is a worthwhile contribution to the dialogue over diversity in its many forms.”
-Steven G. Gey,Florida State University College of Law

Editorial Reviews

“A thoughtful critique of identity politics in the nation’s law schools. . . . It is the great merit of Mr. Subotnik’s work that he moves us toward a single standard for judging scholarship and thus helps create the conditions for the common enterprise of explaining our social world—and even, if we are lucky, improving it.”-The Wall Street Journal

“The left knows how to dish out criticism. Can it take it? With the publication of Toxic Diversity, we'll find out. More subtle and searching than other critiques of critical race theory, critical legal studies, and feminist legal theory, Dan Subotnik’s book poses challenges that all progressives, myself included, will need to consider.”
-Richard Delgado,Professor of Law and Derrick Bell Fellow in Law, University of Pittsburgh Law School

From the Publisher