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:	9780814740002
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2005
Edition description:	Annotated
Pages:	335
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

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

Table of Contents

Preface: Doubt Everything
Part I The Signifying Monkey
1 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 Monologues
7 Chicken Little Goes to Law School
8 The Tall Tales of Women Teachers
9 Unwed Motherhood and Apple Pie
Part III Black and Blue
10 A Casino Society
11 Crime Stories
12 Conclusion: Eyes on the Prize
Afterword: 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. Subotniks 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 worldand even, if we are lucky, improving it."

The Wall Street Journal

"An entertaining and enlightening excursion into the world of critical race and gender theory. Even those who disagree with Subotniks 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

"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 Subotniks book poses challenges that all progressives, myself included, will need to consider."

Richard Delgado

"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

"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

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

“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?

“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

From the Publisher