The miner's canary

"Like the canary's distress, which alerted miners to poison in the air, issues of race point to conditions in American society that endanger us all. In this pioneering new book, Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres warn us that we ignore race at our peril, and propose a dramatic, hopeful shift in the way we think about race and put it to political use.". "Ignoring racial differences - color blindness - has failed, they argue. Race and power intertwine at every level of social interaction, from classrooms to courtrooms to congressional districts. Only cross-racial coalitions can expose these embedded hierarchies of privilege and - through innovative power-sharing and democratic engagement - demolish them. The authors call this concept of enlisting race to resist power political race.". "The Miner's Canary tells many illuminating stories of political race in action - among black workers in a North Carolina pork plant, among Hispanic organizers in a Chicago mayoral race, among privileged private school students in Boston, among a coalition of education reformers in Texas. Seamlessly weaving narrative with theory, Guinier and Torres reveal the implications of political race for affirmative a