His Uncle’s Son

Lessons from My Uncle James: Beyond Skin Color to the Content of Our Character, by Ward Connerly (Encounter, 93 pp., $19.95)

ON November 4, as the prospect of Barack Obama’s election had commentators harkening back to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, voters in Colorado and Nebraska considered identical ballot initiatives that read like a summary of the Act itself: “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”