Why We Walk on Eggshells How Our Civil Rights Laws Stifle Our Civic Discourse

How a little-known 1991 law and a 1978 Supreme Court decision taught Americans to stop speaking honestly about race and sex—and how we can start again

“Federal civil rights law has turned America into a colony of the Karens from HR. Gail Heriot explains how that happened, and what to do about it.”

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, University of Tennessee College of Law

In workplaces across America, employees are trained not to say, “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.” How did a view most Americans hold become too risky to say out loud? In Why We Walk on Eggshells: How Our Civil Rights Laws Stifle Our Civic Discourse (Encounter Books; November 6, 2026), Manhattan Institute senior fellow and former U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Gail Heriot argues that the Woke Era came about partly because of our civil rights laws, not in spite of them. Well-meant laws and court decisions made it costly to disagree on race and sex. When ideas can’t be challenged, Heriot writes, they “slowly grow more and more extreme, eventually losing touch with reality.”

Heriot traces the problem to two wrong turns. On campus, the Supreme Court’s 1978 Bakke decision allowed race-preferential admissions, opening credentials gaps that fed alienation, speech codes, and political correctness. In the workplace, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 made harassment lawsuits lucrative for the first time, and employers responded by policing employee speech at “the pinprick level” through what became DEI training. Before long, what couldn’t be said at work couldn’t be said in public either. Heriot calls the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard “a huge win for the nondiscrimination principle.” She warns, though, that court rulings and executive action can fade under the next administration. Lasting reform means removing the incentives that push institutions to discriminate.

Heriot proposes:

• End the federal race-based Minority Serving Institutions grants. These programs pay schools that cross enrollment thresholds (25 percent Hispanic, for example), which gives them an overwhelming incentive to discriminate. Redirect the money to Pell Grants for low-income students of every race.
• Take the “diversity” stick away from accreditors. Congress should bar accreditors from pressuring colleges over the racial or sex makeup of their students, faculty, and staff.
• Keep enforcing SFFA. That includes “socioeconomic” admissions criteria that are gerrymandered to produce a racial result.
• Don’t make the ’91 Act worse. Resist efforts to lift its caps on damages.

Above all, Heriot says, Americans need to find their voice again. They should speak “politely but firmly” for the principle that the law protects everyone, regardless of race or sex. The book moves from a 1991 Rose Garden signing ceremony to a six-year-old suspended for “sexual harassment,” and it is for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and how to find a way out. As Heriot puts it: “Here’s hoping that more Americans will stop smiling weakly and appearing to agree when they don’t.”

Gail Heriot is a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute and professor emerita at the University of San Diego School of Law. She served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She co-chaired the 1996 campaign for California’s Proposition 209, which banned preferential treatment by the state, and co-chaired the successful 2020 campaign against its repeal. She chairs the board of the American Civil Rights Project and blogs at Instapundit.

7 Takeaways
From Gail Heriot’s WHY WE WALK ON EGGSHELLS

1. Law shapes culture. It’s often said that culture drives law and policy. Heriot shows the reverse is just as true: civil rights laws and court decisions created incentives that remade campus, workplace, and eventually national culture.
2. Incentives matter more than intentions. Good intentions are no substitute for well-thought-out laws. When legislators and judges ignore the incentives they create, the results can be the opposite of what they wanted.
3. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 turned HR into the speech police. By making harassment lawsuits lucrative—and since harassment can be built from many small slights—the ’91 Act pushed employers to control what employees say down to “the pinprick level.”
4. Racial preferences backfired. Preferences allowed by Bakke created credentials gaps on campus that fed alienation, speech codes, and neo-segregation. Research suggests race-neutral admissions would have produced more minority physicians, scientists, engineers, lawyers, and professors.
5. Social media was a multiplier, not the cause. Online pile-ons amplified the eggshell effect, but the hypersensitivity over race and sex had to exist first.
6. Silence has consequences. When reasonable people stopped speaking up, ideas like defunding the police went largely unchallenged—and the communities those ideas claimed to help paid the price.
7. Most Americans still believe in equal treatment—they just need to say so. Polls and California’s 2020 rejection of Proposition 16 show strong support for the nondiscrimination principle. Heriot urges Americans to defend it “politely but firmly.”

“Why We Walk on Eggshells is an incisive look at the wrong turns judges, legislators, and other officials have taken in shaping American civil rights law and policy, and how those choices have led the country in disastrous directions. It is essential reading for anyone interested in restoring the nation’s commitment to equal opportunity for all and moving beyond failed policies of preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity, or sex.”

Heather Mac Donald, Thomas W. Smith Fellow, Manhattan Institute

“Gail Heriot explains the rise, evolution, and consequences of ‘woke’ ideology more definitively (and entertainingly) than anyone ever to tackle the topic. Informed by the unique perspective of a constitutional scholar who is one of the nation’s leading experts on matters pertaining to civil rights, she has authored the premier guide for everyone attempting to understand and navigate the frequently confusing and perilous world of DEI, political correctness, and all things related to civil rights.”

Peter N. Kirsanow, Member, US Commission on Civil Rights, Former Member, National Labor Relations Board

“Gail Heriot is an indispensable voice on civil rights law. Her latest book chronicles the transformation of civil rights from its early goal of color-blind equal opportunity into the abyss of racial preferences and woke ideology. She is a first-rate legal scholar, but perhaps more importantly she communicates difficult ideas into accessible language that can be grasped by the non-expert. This should be required reading by all interested in civil rights law and enforcement.

Linda Chavez, Chair, Center for Equal Opportunity

“Federal civil rights law has turned America into a colony of the Karens from HR. Gail Heriot explains how that happened, and what to do about it.”

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tennessee Winston College of Law