Richard Nixon and the Rise of Affirmative Action: The Pursuit of Racial Equality in an Era of Limits by Kevin Yuill

Is Richard Nixon responsible for the racial "identity" politics of today? Thirty-three years after Nixon left office, his legacy seems overdue for a reassessment. Recently, military historians have argued that Nixon nearly won the war in Indochina. In his recent book on Nixon and Kissinger, Robert Dallek argues that Nixon was more pragmatist than ideologue, and while he often spoke in hyperbole, he rarely followed course. In his recent book, Richard Nixon and the Rise of Affirmative Action, Kevin Yuill confirms Dallek's assessment, arguing that affirmative action was Nixon's practical (if authoritarian) response to black rioting in American cities. However, what began as a pragmatic response to America's pressing racial problems, was part of a larger cultural movement that transformed the individual citizen into a member of a race or ethnic group and spawned the birth of a "clientele" citizenry. This was nothing less than a radical undermining of the tradition of liberal individualism and replaced the idea of individual justice with federally mandated orders to achieve "group justice."

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