Word: guiniers
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...Guinier puts her reforms in the service of progressive ideals rather than using them as cynical shield against white oppression. Recently she's been saying that her proposed system of cumulatitive voting "promotes a concept of racial group identity that is interest-based rather than biological." Guinier's proposed reforms aim to allow voters flexibility to "self-select their identities" and to vote with other voters who share the same interests, whether they are of the same race or not. Voters should be able to from "self-identified, voluntary constituencies that choose to combine because of like minds, not like...
...Guinier is playing up a new image. And it's working. People are starting to see her as progressive, upbeat, and mainstream. Instead of conveying distrust, Guinier now calls up the optimistic belief that America can get past the "poison of racism" with the right reforms. This Lani Guinier ends her new book with a plea for racial healing, public dialogue, positive-sum solutions, moving the country forward, and further progress "towards Martin Luther King's vision of a society in which we are judged by the content of our character, not by the color of our skin...
...Guinier has now made it clear that the believes that race is neither biology nor destiny. In a 1993 article re-printed in her new book, The Tyranny of the Majority, Guinier says that "racial groups are not monolithic, nor are they necessarily cohesive." Guinier wants to let individuals determine their own identities, loyalties, and interests. She says that "groups should be represented, but in way that permit automatic, self-defined apportionment based on shifting political or cultural affiliation and interests." This clearly sets her apart from radical Afrocentric loonies like Leonard Jeffries...
...anyone should be wary of Guinier, it's the multicultural activists who want to institutionalize their group identities. Whether they want to set up ethnic studies departments or ensure themselves a permanent affirmative-action check-off box of graduate school application, ethnic activists who demand such special treatment from institutions should take heed of Guinier's warnings about entrenching racial divisions and categorizations. Measures like racial gerrymandering, Guinier warns, "may be rigidly essentialist, presumptuously isolating, or politically divisive." Race-based affirmative action and separate ethnic studies departments (Asian American, Latino, etc.) share the same essentialist, presumptuous and divisive potential...
...seems, however, that some conservatives at Harvard still have the on image of Guinier. Last week, when Guinier was announced Class Day speaker, campus conservatives derided her "radical" and "extreme" views and even referred to her as a "moron." Conservatives should listen when Guinier speaks in June. They might find themselves agreeing...