"It is the continued controversy surrounding affirmative action that makes Jennifer Pierce's Racing for Innocence an important book for scholars in this field . The greatest strength of Pierce's work is its ability to elucidate the opinions and beliefs of an elite group in American society . Overall, this is a very good book that raises questions that are not going away no matter how much white America wants to believe that racism is dead."--Margaret S. Hrezo, Law and Politics Book Review "This compelling book brings affirmative action back into the spotlight. Pierce delivers insights into the thought processes of opponents of affirmative action--including white women and white men--and also offers insights into how African American attorneys, both women and men, experience white privilege and the stigma of affirmative action as expressed in the language and behavior of whites."--Patricia Yancey Martin, Florida State University "A major contribution to our sociological understanding of the backlash against affirmative action. I know of no other book that examines the issue from so many perspectives.

Pierce provides a unique look at the cultural cues that led some white male lawyers to resist affirmative action in the workplace. She also shows how the media's exclusion of gender and white women from the discussion obscured the reality that white women were a major beneficiary of affirmative action even while they continued to experience workplace discrimination."--Susan E. Chase, University of Tulsa "Interviewing the actual players--those who hire or fire employees--Jennifer Pierce takes a novel approach to understanding how the popular narrative of affirmative action became internalized. This thoughtful book demonstrates how a rather neoconservative template of opinions, metaphors, theories, and beliefs was disseminated into the main stream."--Charles Gallagher, LaSalle University "A signal contribution to the sociological imagination and to critical whiteness studies at the levels of method, content, and even style. Pierce gives human faces and gendered bodies their places in the attack on affirmative action without losing sight of structural forces that have connected colorblindness and conservatism."--David Roediger, University of Illinois, and author of How Race Survived U.

S. History.