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Reviewed by:
  • Talking Affirmative Action: Race, Opportunity, and Everyday Ideology
  • Heather D. Wathington (bio)
Helen D. Lipson. Talking Affirmative Action: Race, Opportunity, and Everyday Ideology. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 208 pp. Paper: $22.95. ISBN: 0-7425-3801-X.

The contentious public debate over affirmative action in higher education continues to seethe, even though the Supreme Court affirmed the limited use of race-conscious admissions in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003. Author Helen D. Lipson asserts that the sources for disparate perspectives on affirmative action are poorly understood. To fill this void, Lipson captures the voices and perspectives of 32 young White men aspiring to graduate professional education. Her book provides a discerning [End Page 214] window into the ordinary, contemporary viewpoints of young White males on affirmative action policies.

Through her study, Lipson seeks to examine the roots of advocacy and opposition to affirmative action policies by understanding her interviewees' support of or opposition to nine race-conscious policies used in higher education admissions. As she points out, "Few studies have examined in any detail the relative acceptability to Whites of different models or features of affirmative action that have taken shape at American colleges and universities" (p. 4). She chose to interview graduate/professional White male aspirants at the University of Illinois-Chicago because she wanted to speak with "young men likely to see themselves as a little more 'at risk' in relation to whatever real or perceived costs to Whites [that] affirmative action brought with it" (p. 15).

Lipson wisely opts to limit her scope to race-conscious policies in graduate/professional admissions only, in which minority students are most underrepresented and the site of at least three major landmark legal cases. She further delimits the discussion by asking interviewees to support or oppose race-conscious policies with the view that the beneficiaries are Black or Latino, a questionable decision when one considers that considerable research suggests that the greatest beneficiaries of affirmative action policies have been White women.

The introduction sets the stage by discussing prior public opinion research, the study's scope and significance, and its plan. Rather than discuss respondents' receptivity to each policy in a rote fashion, Lipson organizes her chapters thematically. These themes are familiar. Chapter 1 explores the concept of "merit" and the challenges associated with using traditional admissions criteria to assess it. Chapter 2 discusses the inequality of outcomes among various groups and plausible explanations for educational and occupational outcomes between groups. In Chapter 3, Lipson examines how far affirmative action efforts should extend to remedy present inequalities. Chapter 4 focuses on who should bear the costs for affirmative action efforts and whether the costs should be borne only by White men. Lastly, Chapter 5 argues that many of the interviewees' policy preferences are embedded in traditional American values and shares thoughts on how to bring the current public debate to some consensus.

In each chapter, Lipson skillfully demonstrates the gaps between advocates' and opponents' perspectives and places where their viewpoints might converge. She provides the reader with a rich description of each interviewee's background and viewpoint. I found the greatest strength of the book to be the insightful analysis of the respondents' comments. Lipson does an exceptional job of intepreting her interviewees' comments to discern their underlying values and assumptions about race, opportunity, and affirmative action.

However, I found two major flaws with the book. The first concerns its methodology. From Lipson's account, it is unclear how she recruited and selected her study participants. She mentions a survey instrument, but the book is silent on how she used it to help recruit subjects for the book. Was the survey part of a larger study? What was the survey's purpose? How was the purposive sample of interviewees selected from survey respondents?

Further, Lipson fails to disclose her interview protocol or even to share what questions she asked of her interviewees during her two-to-three-hour interviews. Finally, although her analysis is nicely nuanced, Lipson provides no details on how she analyzed her voluminous data of 32 interviews. Regretfully, the absence of the study's methodology casts a shadow on the integrity of the study and...

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