可借阅:*
图书馆 | 资料类型 | 排架号 | 子计数 | 书架位置 | 状态 | 图书预约 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
正在检索... Science | Book | 344.01133 B419E, 1991 | 1 | Stacks | 正在检索... 未知 | 正在检索... 不可借阅 |
链接这些题名
已订购
摘要
摘要
A quarter-century after the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, its legacy remains controversial. The statutory language intended to ensure equal opportunity to all individuals is now interpreted as authorizing both public and private employers to adopt preferential policies that benefit designated groups based on race and gender. Much the same transformation has occurred in federal contract programs: President Kennedy's executive order that required equal employment opportunity is now understood as mandating minority hiring with numerical goals tantamount to quotas.
Herman Belz's Equality Transformed: A Quarter-Century of Affirmative Action traces this transformation of equality and how it was brought about by courts, regulatory agencies, and activists. The early champions of civil rights sought to eradicate impediments to advancement for the downtrodden; the ultimate aim was to create a truly colorblind society. Over the years, this goal, while still professed, became even more elusive. Preferences, goals, and timetables - "temporary" means for the attainment of a nondiscriminatory society - seemed to undermine that noble quest.
Equality Transformed provides a textured history of affirmative action and its effects upon race relations and our democratic, egalitarian ideals. In recent years, under the impetus of the Reagan Justice Department, the Supreme Court has backed away, however hesitantly, from its earlier sympathy towards race-conscious remedies and preferential treatment. Belz's analysis of recent Supreme Court cases and their antecedents allows us to better understand both the tensions in our society and the fury that the Court has triggered with its recent civil rights pronouncements.
Belz makes a strong case for hewing to a forward-looking rather than a backward-looking approach to eradicating discrimination. Anyone interested in the history, law, theory, or morality of affirmative action in employment will find Equality Transformed invaluable.
评论 (1)
Choice 评论
Belz (University of Maryland) offers a detailed, scholarly, and highly critical analysis of affirmative action since the early 1960s. He argues that while Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was intended to provide individuals with equal employment opportunites without regard for race, over time, practices by public and private employers that benefit certain groups on the basis of race or gender have become widespread. Instead of viewing employment discrimination as an injury suffered by identifiable individuals, policies now stress disparate impacts that employment practices may have on racial groups. Legislators, judges, regulatory agencies, and activists have replaced the goal of color-blind equal opportunity with that of equal results across racial groups regardless of the personal histories of individual members. Consequently, Belz believes that some individuals who suffered no personal injuries benefit; some who inflicted no injuries suffer; some who need help but belong to the wrong group fail to get it; and all members of the preferred group are stigmatized. The book is timely in light of recent Supreme Court decisions that increase the burden of proof faced by employees alleging employment discrimination. Contemporary congressional debates about quotas, race-norming of tests, and related concerns promise to be key campaign issues. Belz cites some supporters of affirmative action whose works could balance his own. Extensive endnotes and a useful chronology are supplied. Recommended for upper-division undergraduates and graduate students. J. A. Melusky Saint Francis College