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Black Americans continue to lag behind others on many measures of social and economic well-being. Conventional wisdom holds that racial inequality can only be eliminated by eradicating racism and providing effective, well-funded social programs. Race, Wrongs, and Remedies challenges this dominant view and argues that breaking the stalemate on how best to respond to persistent racial disparities requires dispelling the confusion surrounding blacks' own role in achieving racial equality. Dysfunctional behaviors and injuries to human capital, not discrimination, are now the most important factors holding blacks back.

Low educational attainment, poor socialization and work habits, criminality, paternal abandonment, and non-marital childbearing are now far more common among blacks than among other major American groups. The nature of these patterns, as well as experience with interventions designed to address them, reveals that outsiders' power to change these behaviors is severely limited. Personal responsibility and reforming the African American community's cultural outlook are, in fact, the only effective tactics for eliminating black disadvantage.

Amy L. Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She was an Assistant Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice and argued 15 cases before the United States Supreme Court. She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Amy Wax's Race, Wrongs, and Remedies is a provocative discussion of policies to close the race gap in America. Using the insightful legal distinction between liability and remedy, she shows that self-help can be a powerful force for remediating social wrongs. This book will help change the dialogue of race in America from a discussion about passive victims, guilt, and reparations to a more active embrace of individual responsibility and human agency. Its message is bold and clear.

--James J. Heckman, professor of economics, The University of Chicago