The attention and hand-wringing lavished on race relations by Aleinikoff and many others obscures the fact that by every measurement of formal equality, and by many measures of substantive equality, white women are further behind than black men (black women, unsurprisingly, are on the bottom). It leads us to focus our energies, our remedies, and our scarce resources on race discrimination, often at the direct expense of women. I hope to do three things in my brief remarks today. First, I will suggest that Professor Aleinikoff\u27s paper exaggerates the problem it addresses. Second, I will explain what I mean when I say that women are worse off than blacks. Third, I will give examples of how attempts to portray racism as the more serious problem directly and indirectly disadvantage women. No one doubts that racism and race discrimination are still a problem today. But much of Professor Aleinikoff\u27s discussion exaggerates the problem. While his statistics relying on testers to measure job or housing discrimination are probably reliable, his discussions of black and white attitudes leave much to be desired
