In reading Richard Thompson Ford's The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, I was put in mind of one of William Shakespeare's most quoted bon mots. To paraphrase: Kill all the social psychologists!

This came to mind precisely because most books penned on race relations in this country are written by social psychologists, social scientists, sociologists, or folk of that ilk, and inevitably the too-long tomes are weighted down by psychobabble and spurious reasoning designed to show off the author as the lone figure of enlightenment in a morass of bigotry, indolence, and ignorance.

Against that backdrop, Ford's book is a light read (only comparatively), and a detailed
and convincing one, because he is not a purveyor of spurious social sciences, but rather a Stanford University law professor, whose prior published book was Racial Culture: A Critique — a work I've not read, but have read it's similar in tone and dialectic to this book. Therefore, as a lawyer, he does not pad his examples or arguments with moralizing and faux insights; instead he cuts to the meat, snaps the bone, and gorges on the slim marrow of substance such a topic proffers.

And in that marrow, Ford's ideas and analyses provoke thought, whether you feel his ideas are more of the same old liberal gobbledygook, or reprehensible Uncle Tomming designed to give cover for racist whites; and both claims are sure to be hurled, for Ford's lawyerly training makes him hew to an impassive and evenhanded cost/benefit analysis, whereas most writers — especially with social psychology bona fides, would rather rake muck with easy emotionalism.

The book starts off with the first modern example of the race card being played — the infamous late 1980s Tawana Brawley Hoax, which brought to the public fore the sleazy Reverend Al Sharpton. From there he catalogs two decades worth of instances where claims of racism by blacks (celebrities or common folk) were of a dubious nature. These include Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's claim of a 'high tech lynching' when he was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill — a black colleague of questionable emotional stability, whose reputation suffered as much, or more than his, as he was eventually confirmed.

Naturally, the Rodney King and O.J. Simpson mega-events in 1990s Los Angeles get scrutiny. Then there are lesser and less dubious incidents, such as actor Danny Glover's lawsuit claiming he was discriminated against by New York City cabbies, and Oprah Winfrey's ridiculous 'outrage' over not being allowed in after hours at the Parisian department store Hermès; which Ford rightfully portrays as more an abject lesson over the sense of entitlement that all celebrities feel, rather than any old black American female being dissed by the snooty French.

Yet, Ford does not just make his case by using examples, for he dissects these incidents, as well as more cogent, if unknown, legal cases, with a rapier that is not easily defined by any political label, merely a consistency of rationale. At times, some readers may feel that Ford is too detailed, but given the hairsplitting nature of so many claims about race — from racial supremacist theories to the rights and wrongs of race baiting, this is hardly a grand flaw in the book, if one at all.