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Synopsis
The former nominee for assistant attorney general for civil rights discusses, for the first time, how President Clinton abandoned his ambitious civil rights agenda when the political right attacked her nomination, and how the civil rights movement has subsequently suffered. 50,000 first printing. Tour.
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About the Author
Lani Guinier lectures widely on issues of civil rights, social justice, and democracy. Currently Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, she will join the faculty at Harvard Law School, beginning in Fall 1998. The author of The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy and coauthor of Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law Schools and Institutional Change, she now lives in Philadelphia with her husband and son.
Reviews
Legal scholar Guinier describes the experience that made her famous and the lessons she learned from it: President Clinton's withdrawal in 1993 of her nomination as assistant attorney general for civil rights, under withering attack from conservatives. Guinier, recently appointed Harvard Law School's first tenured black female professor, insists in this half-autobiography, half-treatise that Clinton actually did her a favor, despite her anger over the way she was treated by hostile critics, a press too lazy to verify attacks levied against her, and a president who had once been her friend. ``From a momentary crisis,'' she writes, ``I retrieved the opportunity to become who I am'': someone who now strives to emulate Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela by ``pushing forward from behind.'' Guinier describes how she has relearned lessons from early in her career as a crusading lawyer for the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP, that lasting social change comes from the bottom up, from an energized citizenry, rather than from top-down fiats from legislators or administration bureaucrats. Guinier repeatedly hits readers over the head with lectures on participatory democracy and building from the grassroots. Also, her narrative would make more sense if she had placed her most important chapter at the beginning rather than near the end. In it, she defends her belief in proportional representation, which so outraged right-wing pundits in 1993. Her arguments for systems in which, basically, representation is based on the percentage of votes received, rather than winner-take-all, seem perfectly sensible. Certainly, just as her outnumbered defenders argued in 1993, there is nothing in her theories, which are modeled after numerous current and historical examples, to justify the vilification she received. Despite her tendency to pedantry, Guinier is an original and stimulating thinker whose ideas, in contrast to her last wide exposure to the public eye, may now get the broader and fairer airing they deserve. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
The more things change . . . In 1997, the Senate Judiciary Committee refused to send the nomination of Bill Lann Lee as assistant attorney general for civil rights to the floor for a vote; four years earlier, Guinier's nomination for the same post was withdrawn by the White House in the face of a similar attack from the Right distorting the University of Pennsylvania law professor's views (plus the reluctance of the Democratic-controlled judiciary panel to hold a hearing). Lift Every Voice tells a number of stories. In the section titled "Trials," Guinier offers recollections of the several months in 1993 when she was a lightning rod, portrayed as a "quota queen" by foes and theoretically dispassionate observers who did not bother to read the articles used to discredit her; in "Bridges," she surveys civil rights history and the litigation and legislative work that affected the evolution of her concepts; and in "Hearings," she explains those ideas as ways of "breathing new life into American democracy." Guinier criticizes the Clinton administration's handling of her nomination but avoids whining; painful experience leads her to challenge the insider approach of major civil rights organizations as well as politicians. In the end, Guinier defines democracy and citizenship more broadly than her enemies (and some of her friends); those definitions deserve serious debate. Mary Carroll
Guinier on why she lost the nomination for assistant attorney general.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback Into a New Vision of Social Justice
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Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback Into a New Vision of Social Justice
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Simon & Schuster (edition First Edition), 1998
ISBN 10: 0684811456
ISBN 13: 9780684811451
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Lift Every Voice
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Hardback. Condition: Good. In 1993, shortly after his inauguration, new President Bill Clinton nominated his old friend and classmate Lani Guinier to the prestigious and crucial post of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. That nomination sparked an immediate firestorm of criticism from the right, labeling Professor Guinier the Quota Queen and assailing her for the ideas expressed in her publications, most of which her opponents had not read, or had taken out of context and misunderstood. In the face of this concerted opposition -- what one friend of Guinier's called a low-tech lynching -- Clinton backed down, not only withdrawing her nomination, but having refused throughout to give her an opportunity to speak out in her own defense (and his). The result was a civil rights setback of monumental proportions. Now, in this remarkable and important book, at once a memoir and insider's account of what really happened behind the closed doors of the Oval Office, the Justice Department, and the U.S. Senate, and an insightful look at the past, present, and future of civil rights in America, Lani Guinier at last breaks her silence. Unsparing of her own mistakes and shrewdly perceptive about the overt and hidden agendas of those who opposed her, Professor Guinier shows how the president promptly abandoned his ambitious agenda for civil rights at the first hint of criticism from the media and Congress -- and how the civil rights movement suffered a major setback as a result. More important, this book, in Professor Guinier's own words, is about the battles fought in the belief that our racial history and our commitment to equality and democracy are essential parts of the same story. It has not always been a pretty story, nor one that follows an inevitable path. This book is not, however, an effort to settle scores. It's a story of the efforts of men and women who believe fundamentally in the promise of the American creed and who act on that belief in their everyday lives. These are people whose lives are without notoriety or fame, but in whose willingness to take risks we see the honor of real heroism. Above all, Guinier goes on to describe how her experience at the hands of the press, the White House, and her congressional enemies has given her both a new voice and a renewed faith in the ongoing struggle for civil rights. Her book is an extraordinary account of just how the civil rights movement acquired its strength, drawn from the courage of ordinary people standing up against fearful odds for what was right, and from the commitment to make change happen from the bottom up, relying on the wisdom and common sense of those at grassroots level. Using her own nomination as a symbolic point of reference, she shows just how weak and divided the cause of civil rights has become, as its leaders have all too often been silenced by the very people they should be challenging. Finally, she explains, in her own words, the truth about her political ideas -- which are rooted in democracy and its principles, not in quotas and affirmative action -- and examines the state of current race relations. Renewing her call for a national conversation on the issue of civil rights and social justice, this thought-provoking book is certain to spark a new and much-needed debate. Seller Inventory # CIN0684811456G
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Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback Into a New Vision of Social Justice
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