When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives

by Heather Mac Donald

Overview

Does your workplace have too few black people in top jobs? It’s racist. Does the advanced math and science high school in your city have too many Asians? It’s racist. Does your local museum employ too many white women? It’s racist, too.

After the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, prestigious American institutions, from the medical profession to the fine arts, pleaded guilty to “systemic racism.” How else explain why blacks are overrepresented in prisons and underrepresented in C-suites and faculty lounges, their leaders asked?

The official answer for those disparities is “disparate impact,” a once obscure legal theory that is now transforming our world. Any traditional standard of behavior or achievement that impedes exact racial proportionality in any enterprise is now presumed racist. Medical school admissions tests, expectations of scientific accomplishment in the award of research grants, the enforcement of the criminal law—all are under assault, because they have a “disparate impact” on underrepresented minorities.

When Race Trumps Merit provides an alternative explanation for those racial disparities. It is large academic skills gaps that cause the lack of proportional representation in our most meritocratic organizations and large differences in criminal offending that account for the racially disproportionate prison population.

The need for such a corrective argument could not be more urgent. Federal science agencies now treat researchers’ skin color as a scientific qualification. Museums and orchestras choose which art and music to promote based on race. Police officers avoid making arrests and prosecutors decline to bring charges to avoid disparate impact on minority criminals.

When Race Trumps Merit breaks powerful taboos. But it is driven by a sense of alarm, supported by detailed case studies of how disparate-impact thinking is jeopardizing scientific progress, destroying public order, and poisoning the appreciation of art and culture. As long as alleged racism remains the only allowable explanation for racial differences, we will continue tearing down excellence and putting lives, as well as civilizational achievement, at risk.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781956007169
Publisher:	DW Books
Publication date:	04/18/2023
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	88,584
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor at City Journal, and the 2005 recipient of the Bradley Prize. Mac Donald received a BA from Yale University, an MA from Cambridge University, and a JD from Stanford University. Her work has covered a range of topics, from higher education and immigration to policing and race relations. Mac Donald’s writing has appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York Times. She is the author of several critically acclaimed books, including The Diversity Delusion and the New York Times bestseller The War on Cops.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: A Cultural Revolution

 

OVERVIEW: The Bias Fallacy

 

PART I: SCIENCE AND MEDICINE

CHAPTER ONE: Medicine’s Racial Reckoning

CHAPTER TWO: How ‘Diversity’ Subverts Science

 

PART II: CULTURE AND ARTS

CHAPTER THREE: The Crusade Against Classical Music

CHAPTER FOUR: Scapegoats and the Rise of Mediocrity

CHAPTER FIVE: Making Beethoven Woke

CHAPTER SIX: Can Opera Survive the Culture Wars?

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Revolution Comes to Juilliard

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Swamping of Swan Lake

CHAPTER NINE: The Demise of the Docent

CHAPTER TEN: Museums Apologize for Art

CHAPTER ELEVEN: An Art Museum Cancels Art

CHAPTER TWELVE: Abstainers

 

PART III: LAW AND ORDER

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: A New Crime Wave

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Road to Anarchy

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: On Double Standards

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: A Grim—and Ignored—Body Count

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Mass Shootings, Hate Crimes, and Race

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The Chauvin Trial and Its Aftermath

CONCLUSION: Saving Meritocracy, Saving a Civilization

Editorial Reviews

Praise

“I read every word Heather Mac Donald writes and always have. She is brilliant and has tons of guts and is an inspiration." — Peggy Noonan, New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize Winner for Commentary

 

"Others besides Heather Mac Donald have indicted academia for devastating liberal education, but no one has ever documented the damage as Mac Donald does in The Diversity Delusion. It is crammed with facts and numbers that universities go to great lengths to hide. How she did it is a mystery, but The Diversity Delusion will be my master reference for anything I write on these topics." — Charles Murray, Emeritus Scholar, American Enterprise Institute

 

"If there were any justice in the world, Mac Donald would be knee-deep in Pulitzer Prizes and National Magazine Awards for her pioneering work." — David Brooks

 

"No journalist now writing about urban problems has produced a body of work matching that of Heather Mac Donald." — George Will

 

"You need to know Heather Mac Donald. She’ll mess with your mind and make you either up your politico-cultural game or admit you were wrong." — Debra J. Dickerson, Mother Jones

From the Publisher