Download or read book The Politics of Affirmative Action written by Carol Lee Bacchi and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1996-09-24 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book makes a major contribution to an issue of central concern to feminists. It is well written, thoroughly researched and thoughtfully argued. Wide-ranging and comprehensive in scope, the book is carefully structured, using different countries to illustrate the specific ways in which affirmative action is co-opted and contained in practice' - Jeanne Gregory, Middlesex University " This timely and incisive book brings a theoretical lens to the debates around affirmative action. It presents a comparative analysis of those countries reputed to be leading the way in policies for women - the United States, Canada, Australia, Sweden, The Netherlands and Norway. Carol Lee Bacchi draws upon current social and feminist theory to present a lucid analysis of the implementation of reform. Taking account of the particular historical context of affirmative action policies, she considers why expressed commitment to affirmative action for women has failed to translate into meaningful reform. She describes how conceptual and identity categories are given meanings and positioned in debate in ways which work to contain the effects of the reform. Bacchi concludes that proponents of affirmative action need to direct more attention to the political uses of categories than to their abstract content, and to concentrate their efforts upon exposing the effects of category politics.
Download or read book The The Ironies of Affirmative Action written by John D. Skrentny and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-12-01 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Affirmative action has been fiercely debated for more than a quarter of a century, producing much partisan literature, but little serious scholarship and almost nothing on its cultural and political origins. The Ironies of Affirmative Action is the first book-length, comprehensive, historical account of the development of affirmative action. Analyzing both the resistance from the Right and the support from the Left, Skrentny brings to light the unique moral culture that has shaped the affirmative action debate, allowing for starkly different policies for different citizens. He also shows, through an analysis of historical documents and court rulings, the complex and intriguing political circumstances which gave rise to these controversial policies. By exploring the mystery of how it took less than five years for a color-blind policy to give way to one that explicitly took race into account, Skrentny uncovers and explains surprising ironies: that affirmative action was largely created by white males and initially championed during the Nixon administration; that many civil rights leaders at first avoided advocacy of racial preferences; and that though originally a political taboo, almost no one resisted affirmative action. With its focus on the historical and cultural context of policy elites, The Ironies of Affirmative Action challenges dominant views of policymaking and politics.
Download or read book To Fulfill These Rights written by Amaka Okechukwu and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2014 and 2015, students at dozens of colleges and universities held protests demanding increased representation of Black and Latino students and calling for a campus climate that was less hostile to students of color. Their activism recalled an earlier era: in the 1960s and 1970s, widespread campus protest by Black and Latino students contributed to the development of affirmative action and open admissions policies. Yet in the decades since, affirmative action has become a magnet for conservative backlash and in many cases has been completely dismantled. In To Fulfill These Rights, Amaka Okechukwu offers a historically informed sociological account of the struggles over affirmative action and open admissions in higher education. Through case studies of policy retrenchment at public universities, she documents the protracted—but not always successful—rollback of inclusive policies in the context of shifting race and class politics. Okechukwu explores how conservative political actors, liberal administrators and legislators, and radical students have defined, challenged, and transformed the racial logics of colorblindness and diversity through political struggle. She highlights the voices and actions of the students fighting policy shifts in on-the-ground accounts of mobilization and activism, alongside incisive scrutiny of conservative tactics and messaging. To Fulfill These Rights provides a new analysis of the politics of higher education, centering the changing understandings and practices of race and class in the United States. It is timely and important reading at a moment when a right-wing Department of Justice and Supreme Court threaten the end of affirmative action.
Download or read book Understanding Affirmative Action written by J. Edward Kellough and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For some time, the United States has been engaged in a national debate over affirmative action policy. A policy that began with the idea of creating a level playing field for minorities has sparked controversy in the workplace, in higher education, and elsewhere. After forty years, the debate still continues and the issues are as complex as ever. While most Americans are familiar with the term, they may not fully understand what affirmative action is and why it has become such a divisive issue. With this concise and up-to-date introduction, J. Edward Kellough brings together historical, philosophical, and legal analyses to fully inform participants and observers of this debate. Aiming to promote a more thorough knowledge of the issues involved, this book covers the history, legal status, controversies, and impact of affirmative action in both the private and public sectors -- and in education as well as employment. In addition, Kellough shows how the development and implementation of affirmative action policies have been significantly influenced by the nature and operation of our political institutions. Highlighting key landmarks in legislation and court decisions, he explains such concepts as "disparate impact," "diversity management," "strict scrutiny," and "representative bureaucracy." Understanding Affirmative Action probes the rationale for affirmative action, the different arguments against it, and the known impact it has had. Kellough concludes with a consideration of whether or not affirmative action will remain a useful tool for combating discrimination in the years to come. Not just for students in public administration and public policy, this handy volume will be a valuable resource for public administrators, human resource managers, and ordinary citizens looking for a balanced treatment of a controversial policy.
Download or read book Affirmative Action written by Tim J. Wise and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book The Prism of Race written by David Lehmann and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2018-07-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How race quotas--and their public perception--reflect Brazil's complicated history with racial injustice
Download or read book Affirmative Action for the Future written by James Sterba and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when private and public institutions of higher education are reassessing their admissions policies in light of new economic conditions, Affirmative Action for the Future is a clarion call for the need to keep the door of opportunity open. In 2003, U.S. Supreme Court's Grutter and Gratz decisions vindicated the University of Michigan Law School's affirmative action program while striking down the particular affirmative action program used for undergraduates at the university. In 2006 and 2008, state referendums banned affirmative action in some states while upholding it in others. Taking these developments into account, James P. Sterba draws on his vast experience as a champion of affirmative action to mount a new moral and legal defense of the practice as a useful tool for social reform. Sterba documents the level of racial and sexual discrimination that still exists in the United States and then, arguing that diversity is a public good, he calls for expansion of the reach of affirmative action as a mechanism for encouraging true diversity. In his view, we must include in our understanding of affirmative action the need to favor those who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, regardless of race and sex. Elite colleges and universities could best facilitate opportunities for students from working-class and poor families, in Sterba's view, by cutting back on legacy and athletic preferences that overwhelmingly benefit wealthy white applicants.
Download or read book Race Class and Affirmative Action written by Sigal Alon and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No issue in American higher education is more contentious than that of race-based affirmative action. In light of the ongoing debate around the topic and recent Supreme Court rulings, affirmative action policy may be facing further changes. As an alternative to race-based affirmative action, some analysts suggest affirmative action policies based on class. In Race, Class, and Affirmative Action, sociologist Sigal Alon studies the race-based affirmative action policies in the United States. and the class-based affirmative action policies in Israel. Alon evaluates how these different policies foster campus diversity and socioeconomic mobility by comparing the Israeli policy with a simulated model of race-based affirmative action and the U.S. policy with a simulated model of class-based affirmative action. Alon finds that affirmative action at elite institutions in both countries is a key vehicle of mobility for disenfranchised students, whether they are racial and ethnic minorities or socioeconomically disadvantaged. Affirmative action improves their academic success and graduation rates and leads to better labor market outcomes. The beneficiaries of affirmative action in both countries thrive at elite colleges and in selective fields of study. As Alon demonstrates, they would not be better off attending less selective colleges instead. Alon finds that Israel’s class-based affirmative action programs have provided much-needed entry slots at the elite universities to students from the geographic periphery, from high-poverty high schools, and from poor families. However, this approach has not generated as much ethnic diversity as a race-based policy would. By contrast, affirmative action policies in the United States have fostered racial and ethnic diversity at a level that cannot be matched with class-based policies. Yet, class-based policies would do a better job at boosting the socioeconomic diversity at these bastions of privilege. The findings from both countries suggest that neither race-based nor class-based models by themselves can generate broad diversity. According to Alon, the best route for promoting both racial and socioeconomic diversity is to embed the consideration of race within class-based affirmative action. Such a hybrid model would maximize the mobility benefits for both socioeconomically disadvantaged and minority students. Race, Class, and Affirmative Action moves past political talking points to offer an innovative, evidence-based perspective on the merits and feasibility of different designs of affirmative action.
Download or read book Affirmative Action Around the World written by Thomas Sowell and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eminent authority presents a new perspective on affirmative action in a provocative book that will stir fresh debate about this vitally important issue
Download or read book The Affirmative Action Empire written by Terry Dean Martin and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text provides a survey of the Soviet management of the nationalities question. It traces the conflicts and tensions created by the geographic definition of national territories, the establishment of several official national languages and the world's first mass "affirmative action" programmes.
Download or read book Politics of Inclusion written by Zoya Hasan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-07 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-Mandal, the demand for reservations by various groups has become a consistent feature of Indian politics. Yet, the focus remains on caste, with little attention paid to the under-representation of religious minorities in India. The book takes up the case of relative disadvantage and interogates the multiple and overlapping dimensions of deprivation. Hasan argues that, in view of the comparative evidence avaiable, presently excluded and disadvantaged groups should also qualify for affirmative action. This book will interest students and scholars of Indian politics, sociology, and history.
Download or read book Place Not Race written by Sheryll Cashin and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a nationally recognized expert, a fresh and original argument for bettering affirmative action Race-based affirmative action had been declining as a factor in university admissions even before the recent spate of related cases arrived at the Supreme Court. Since Ward Connerly kickstarted a state-by-state political mobilization against affirmative action in the mid-1990s, the percentage of four-year public colleges that consider racial or ethnic status in admissions has fallen from 60 percent to 35 percent. Only 45 percent of private colleges still explicitly consider race, with elite schools more likely to do so, although they too have retreated. For law professor and civil rights activist Sheryll Cashin, this isn’t entirely bad news, because as she argues, affirmative action as currently practiced does little to help disadvantaged people. The truly disadvantaged—black and brown children trapped in high-poverty environs—are not getting the quality schooling they need in part because backlash and wedge politics undermine any possibility for common-sense public policies. Using place instead of race in diversity programming, she writes, will better amend the structural disadvantages endured by many children of color, while enhancing the possibility that we might one day move past the racial resentment that affirmative action engenders. In Place, Not Race, Cashin reimagines affirmative action and champions place-based policies, arguing that college applicants who have thrived despite exposure to neighborhood or school poverty are deserving of special consideration. Those blessed to have come of age in poverty-free havens are not. Sixty years since the historic decision, we’re undoubtedly far from meeting the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, but Cashin offers a new framework for true inclusion for the millions of children who live separate and unequal lives. Her proposals include making standardized tests optional, replacing merit-based financial aid with need-based financial aid, and recruiting high-achieving students from overlooked places, among other steps that encourage cross-racial alliances and social mobility. A call for action toward the long overdue promise of equality, Place, Not Race persuasively shows how the social costs of racial preferences actually outweigh any of the marginal benefits when effective race-neutral alternatives are available.
Download or read book The Constitutional Logic of Affirmative Action written by Ronald J. Fiscus and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-30 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few issues are as mired in rhetoric and controversy as affirmative action. This is certainly no less true now as when Ronald J. Fiscus’s The Constitutional Logic of Affirmative Action was first published in 1992. The controversy has, perhaps, become more charged over the past few years. With this compelling and rigorously reasoned argument for a constitutional rationale of affirmative action, Fiscus clarifies the moral and legal ramifications of this complex subject and presents an important view in the context of the ongoing debate. Beginning with a distinction drawn between principles of compensatory and distributive justice, Fiscus argues that the former, although often the basis for judgments made in individual discrimination cases, cannot sufficiently justify broad programs of affirmative action. Only a theory of distributive justice, one that assumes minorities have a right to what they would have gained proportionally in a nonracist society, can persuasively provide that justification. On this basis, the author argues in favor of proportional racial quotas—and challenges the charge of “reverse discrimination” raised in protest in the name of the “innocent victims” of affirmative action—as an action necessary to approach the goals of fairness and equality. The Constitutional Logic of Affirmative Action focuses on Supreme Court affirmative action rulings from Bakke (1976) to Croson (1989) and includes an epilogue by editor Stephen L. Wasby that considers developments through 1995. General readers concerned with racial justice, affirmative action, and public policy, as well as legal specialists and constitutional scholars will find Fiscus’s argument passionate, balanced, and persuasive.
Download or read book Affirmative Talk Affirmative Action written by Augustus J. Jones and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1991-08-30 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Affirmative action programs have been implemented in over 50 jurisdictions in the United States, yet studies of a number of these communities have shown that most efforts to meet proposed race-conscious hiring goals have been unsuccessful. This unique comparative case study investigates the reasons for the success or failure of affirmative action programs in two Southern communities. Augustus J. Jones, Jr. challenges the findings in the literature that affirmative action efforts are doomed to failure. This analysis does what similar studies have failed to do: it identifies and defines those elements--communications, resources, commitment, political-social conditions, and bureaucratic arrangements--required for the successful execution of any public policy program, and then offers appropriate strategies in a detailed, step-by-step approach for successfully executing affirmative action goals. Research for the volume includes over 50 interviews of city, state, and federal officials responsible for implementing affirmative action goals, on-the-spot observations of the communities' affirmative action shops, and written records of city and country commission meetings. Following an introductory chapter that outlines the purpose, justifications, and methodology of the work, the second chapter compares variables within the two communities, such as their civil rights records, political orientation, and progress in meeting affirmative action goals. Five subsequent chapters focus on the key elements in race-conscious hiring programs, including communications, resources, commitment, political conditions, and organizational arrangements. The final chapter offers conclusions, a recipe for successful affirmative action programs, and speculations about the future of these programs. This useful assessment will become a standard affirmative action how-to book for scholars, students, policy analysts, bureaucrats both inside and outside government, and equal opportunity officers at the federal, state, and local levels who are responsible for implementing and enforcing equal opportunity laws and affirmative action goals.
Download or read book For Discrimination written by Randall Kennedy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive reckoning with one of America’s most explosively contentious and divisive issues—from “one of our most important and perceptive writers on race and the law.... The mere fact that he wrote this book is all the justification necessary for reading it.”—The Washington Post What precisely is affirmative action, and why is it fiercely championed by some and just as fiercely denounced by others? Does it signify a boon or a stigma? Or is it simply reverse discrimination? What are its benefits and costs to American society? What are the exact indicia determining who should or should not be accorded affirmative action? When should affirmative action end, if it must? Randall Kennedy gives us a concise and deeply personal overview of the policy, refusing to shy away from the myriad complexities of an issue that continues to bedevil American race relations.
Download or read book Color Lines written by John D. Skrentny and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-06 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobody's Burden: Lessons on Old Age from the Great Depression is the first book-length study of the experience of old-age during the Great Depression. Part history, part social critique, the contributors rely on archival research, social history, narrative study and theoretical analysis to argue that Americans today, as in the past, need to rethink old-age policy and accept their shared responsibility for elder care. The Great Depression serves as the cultural backdrop to this argument, illustrating that during times of social and economic crisis, society's ageism and the limitations in old-age care become all the more apparent. At the core of the book are vivid stories of specific men and women who applied for old-age pensions from a private foundation in Detroit, Michigan, between 1927 and 1933. Most applicants who received pensions became life-long clients, and their lives were documented in great detail by social workers employed by the foundation. These stories raise issues that elders and their families face today: the desire for independence and autonomy; the importance of having a place of one's own, despite financial and physical dependence; the fears of being and becoming a burden to one's self and others; and the combined effects of ageism, racism, sexism and classism over the life course of individuals and families. Contributors focus in particular on issues of gender and aging, as the majority of clients were women over 60, and all of the case workers - among the first geriatric social workers in the country -- were women in their 20s and early 30s. Nobody's Burden is unique not only in content, but also in method and form. The contributors were members of an archival research group devoted to the study of these case files. Research was conducted collaboratively and involved scholars from the humanities (English, folklore) and the social sciences (anthropology, communications, gerontology, political science, social work, and sociology).
Download or read book The Affirmative Action Debate written by George Curry and published by . This book was released on 1996-06-20 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Politicians, executives, lawyers, and social researchers discuss affirmative action policies, their benefits and problems, and alternative solutions to discrimination.
