Significantly, manufacturing jobs that had been stepping-stones into the middle class for blacks from the U.S. South and immigrants from southern, eastern, and central Europe in the past, were fast eroding.

It is this last point which makes up the bulk of his discussion on how affirmative action has led to a mismatch between minority students and the institutions they attend, setting them up either for failure or turning them out to be bad doctors and lawyers.

Third, Sowell is highly critical of William Bowen and Derek Bok, former university presidents of Princeton and Harvard, whose 1998 book The Shape of the River caused quite a stir when it revealed how race-sensitive admissions policies increased the likelihood that blacks would be admitted to selective universities and that upon graduation these students were more likely to become leaders of community and social service organizations.

"[4] Economic historian Stuart Jones called the book a "brilliant empirical study of affirmative action" and stated that it "deserves to be read widely, especially by politicians and development economists.

"[6] A review in The Yale Journal of International Law wrote that the book is "an extensively researched, accessibly written, and refreshingly comparative addition to the conservative canon."

"[7] Michael Bérubé, writing for The Nation magazine, agreed with Sowell's arguments that affirmative action has gone far beyond what the Civil Rights Act of 1965 intended and that preferential benefits for ethnic groups without historical oppression in the United States are unjustified but criticized Sowell's association of affirmative action with unrest in the countries selected for the study and pointed out the United States has never implemented the racial preference systems of those foreign countries.

Conrad concludes that the book "succeeds in establishing the costs of the policy are similar around the world, but it fails as an overall assessment of affirmative action.