The Hidden Debate: The Truth Revealed About the Battle over Affirmative Action in South Africa and the United States (Book Review)

THE HIDDEN DEBATE: THE TRUTH REVEALED ABOUT THE BATTLE OVER AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE UNITED STATES, Akil Kokayi Khalfani. New York: Routledge, 2006. THE HIDDEN DEBATE is about affirmative action as a tool for social change in both the US and South Africa, two countries in which past affirmative privileges for whites continue to account for the inequality experienced by the subordinate African and nonwhite minority populations. In the US, affirmative action has been one of America's most divisive social issues in the post-Civil Rights movement era. In South Africa, it undergirded the African National Congress's persistent movement for a national policy of non-racialism, which since the 1990s has been articulated in the country's New Constitution, and championed by Nelson Mandela as essential for both establishing basic human rights and national development. In the Hidden Debate, Khalfani argues that the debate over affirmative action in both countries is a debate over deeper conflicts of core social values concerning "precepts of liberty, equality, and justice." These precepts, in Khalfani's conceptual scheme, have a universal quality that has motivated leaders of both countries to agitate for affirmative action policies and to generate popular support in the interest of justice and human rights for black and minority populations.