A lightening rod for liberal and conservative opposition alike, affirmative action has proved one of the more divisive issues in the United States over the past five decades. Dennis Deslippe here ...offers a thoughtful study of early opposition to the nation’s race- and gender-sensitive hiring and promotion programs in higher education and the workplace.
This story begins more than fifteen years before the 1978 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Partisans attacked affirmative action almost immediately after it first appeared in the 1960s. Liberals in the opposition movement played an especially significant role. While not completely against the initiative, liberal opponents strove for “soft” affirmative action (recruitment, financial aid, remedial programs) and against “hard” affirmative action (numerical goals, quotas). In the process of balancing ideals of race and gender equality with competing notions of colorblindness and meritocracy, they even borrowed the language of the civil rights era to make far-reaching claims about equality, justice, and citizenship in their anti–affirmative action rhetoric.
Deslippe traces this conflict through compelling case studies of real people and real jobs. He asks what the introduction of affirmative action meant to the careers and livelihoods of Seattle steelworkers, New York asbestos handlers, St. Louis firemen, Detroit policemen, City University of New York academics, and admissions councilors at the University of Washington Law School. Through their experiences, Deslippe examines the diverse reactions to affirmative action, concluding that workers had legitimate grievances against its hiring and promotion practices.
In studying this phenomenon, Deslippe deepens our understanding of American democracy and neoconservatism in the late twentieth century and shows how the liberals’ often contradictory positions of the 1960s and 1970s reflect the conflicted views about affirmative action many Americans still hold today.
Equal opportunity in the workplace is thought to be the direct legacy of the civil rights and feminist movements and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, as Frank Dobbin demonstrates, ...corporate personnel experts--not Congress or the courts--were the ones who determined what equal opportunity meant in practice, designing changes in how employers hire, promote, and fire workers, and ultimately defining what discrimination is, and is not, in the American imagination. Dobbin shows how Congress and the courts merely endorsed programs devised by corporate personnel. He traces how the first measures were adopted by military contractors worried that the Kennedy administration would cancel their contracts if they didn't take "affirmative action" to end discrimination. These measures built on existing personnel programs, many designed to prevent bias against unionists. Dobbin follows the changes in the law as personnel experts invented one wave after another of equal opportunity programs. He examines how corporate personnel formalized hiring and promotion practices in the 1970s to eradicate bias by managers; how in the 1980s they answered Ronald Reagan's threat to end affirmative action by recasting their efforts as diversity-management programs; and how the growing presence of women in the newly named human resources profession has contributed to a focus on sexual harassment and work/life issues.
‘Affirmative Action and the Law’ analyses the practical application of affirmative action measures and their efficacy in achieving substantive equality through the lenses of the United Nations human ...rights machinery and the legal regime and policies implemented in China, India, Central and South America, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The product of a joint research project involving academics from the Brazil, Chile, Mexico, India, Spain and the United Kingdom, the findings identify and reflect on trends emerging from State practice across the world in eradicating structural inequality through special measures for certain designated groups.
The book seeks to provide a coherent and systematic approach to the analysis of special measures in the targeted countries. It also comprises two case-studies with in-depth insights on gender diversity on the boards of public listed companies in the UK and the European Union and the access of persons with disabilities to higher education in Brazil.
The book will be a valuable resource for students and academics in the field of human rights, law, sociology and politics. It will also provide a source of good practice for states and policy makers in the framing of responses to increased inequality at national and international level; and for civil society actors seeking to explore meaningful interaction with a highly controversial topic in society.
This book moves the discussion of affirmative action beyond the United States to other countries that have had similar policies, often for a longer time than Americans have. It also moves the ...discussion beyond the theories, principles, and laws that have been so often debated to the actual empirical consequences of affirmative action in the United States and in India, Nigeria, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and other countries. Both common patterns and national differences are examined. Much of what emerges from a factual examination of these policies flatly contradicts much of what was expected and much of what has been claimed.
Sunita Parikh examines the history and fate of affirmative action programs in two ethnically heterogeneous democracies, the United States and India. Affirmative action programs in the United States ...represent a controversial policy about which the American public feel at best ambivalence and at worst hostility, while in India the expansion of reservation policies in recent years has led to riots and contributed to the fall of governments. And yet these policies were not particularly controversial when they were introduced. How the policy traveled from these auspicious beginnings to its current predicament can best be understood, according to Parikh, by exploring the changing political conditions under which it was introduced, expanded, and then challenged.
Although they are in many respects very different countries, India and the United States are important countries in which to study the implementation of ascriptive policies like affirmative action, according to Parikh. They are both large, heterogeneous societies with democratic political systems in which previously excluded groups were granted benefits by the majorities that had historically oppressed them. Parikh argues that these policies were the product of democratic politics--which required political parties to mobilize existing groups as voters--and the ethnically heterogeneous nature of Indian and U.S. society--where ethnic markers are particularly salient sources of identification as groups. Affirmative action in both countries was introduced because it could be used to solidify and expand electoral coalitions by giving benefits to defined minority groups, according to Parikh. As the policy became better known, it became more disliked by non-targeted groups, and it was no longer an appeal which was cost free for politicians.
This book will be of interest to social scientists concerned with race and ethnic relations and with the comparative study of political and social systems.
Sunita Parikh is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Columbia University.
The gender-affirmative life span approach (GALA) is an innovative therapeutic framework for promoting the mental health of transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) clients of all ages. Based in ...interdisciplinary philosophical foundations, GALA proposes that TGD clients can be supported in psychotherapy through (a) developing gender literacy, (b) building resiliency, (c) moving beyond the binary, (d) exploring pleasure-oriented sexuality, and (e) making connections to medical interventions. Psychotherapy incorporating these 5 core components is developmentally tailored for children, adolescents, young adults, or older adults. Developing gender literacy is the process of understanding how sex assigned at birth, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation are distinct but interconnected concepts, as well as learning to identify oppressive practices in TGD people's lives. Building resiliency involves learning how to overcome adversity and effectively cope with challenging situations in life. Resiliency-building also involves having social support networks to share these difficulties and gain support. Gender and sexual binaries pathologize nonconformity and limit the full range of healthy gender and sexual expression. Moving beyond the binary to a spectrum approach allows for the inclusion and affirmation of all gender identities and expressions. Unfortunately, research and practice have largely focused on negative sexual outcomes for TGD people. Thus, age-appropriate psychotherapy aimed at developing sex-positive pleasure and satisfaction is critical. Lastly, gender-competent mental health practitioners need to have knowledge about, and skills to refer for, medical interventions, when appropriate.
Clinical Impact StatementQuestion: As transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) people's needs have increasingly been included in healthcare practices, and as more TGD people affirm their identities at younger ages, it is clear that a new model of gender-affirmative mental health care is needed. Findings: The gender-affirmative life span approach (GALA) is an innovative therapeutic framework for promoting the mental health of TGD people across the life span, with broad implications for gender and sexual health. Meaning: GALA proposes that TGD people can be supported in psychotherapy through (a) developing gender literacy, (b) building resiliency, (c) moving beyond the binary, (d) exploring pleasure-based sexuality, and (e) making connections to medical interventions. Next Steps: We invite psychotherapists to adopt GALA when working with TGD clients of all ages.
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