Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study is a 2004 nonfiction work by economist Thomas Sowell. Summary Already known as a critic of affirmative action or race-based hiring and promotion, Sowell, himself African-American, analyzes the specific effects of such policies on India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Nigeria, four countries with longer multiethnic histories and then compares them with the recent history of the United States in this regard. He finds that "Such programs have at best a negligible impact on the groups they are intended to assist." A sample of his thinking about perpetual racial preferences is this passage from page 7: According to Dutch Martin's review of this book: Among the common consequences of preference policies in the five-country sample are: They encourage non-preferred groups to redesignate themselves as members of preferred groups (1) to take advantage of group preference policies; They tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g. black millionaires), often to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g. poor whites); They reduce the incentives of both the preferred and non-preferred to perform at their best—the former because doing so is unnecessary and the latter because it can prove futile—thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole. Sowell concludes: "Despite sweeping claims made for affirmative action programs, an examination of their actual consequences makes it hard to support those claims, or even to say that these programs have been beneficial on net balance." Arguments First, in repudiating what he refers to as the "myths" surrounding affirmative action, he contends that blacks had both higher rates of labor force participation and higher marriage rates before the 1960s' large-scale institution of civil rights laws and policies countering discrimination. Much of the economic upturn, which Sowell attributes entirely to personal initiative, must be put in the context of the postwar economic boom, which was accompanied by the widespread availability of manual jobs requiring little education. The post-civil rights period coincided with an economy that was experiencing steady de-industrialization. Significantly, manufacturing jobs that had been stepping-stones into the middle class for blacks from the U.S. South and immigrants from southern, eastern, and central Europe in the past, were fast eroding. Second, he questions the conventional wisdom that has evolved around affirmative action. He claims that there is nothing beyond assertions and anecdotes to prove that diversity enhances the college experience