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Race, History, and Policy: African Americans and Civil Rights Since 1964

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Hugh Davis Graham
Hugh Davis Graham
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
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Extract

Dwarfing all debates over civil rights policy and race relations during the three decades since 1964 has been the storm over affirmative action. Critics have argued that affirmative action in practice has meant requiring racial quotas, and hence practicing “reverse discrimination” against innocent (usually white male) third parties. This has been done, critics contend, in the name of a law, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that explicitly prohibited racial preferences. Proponents have countered that racism is so deeply rooted in American culture and institutions that mere nondiscrimination will perpetuate the injustice of the past. There is abundant evidence to support both contentions. The purpose of this essay is not to weigh the evidence and determine which side is correct. Ultimately such profound disagreements are not resolvable by logic and evidence alone, because they hinge on divergent assumptions about human nature and the purpose and limits of government. My more modest goal in this essay is to use the insights of history to understand why civil rights policy evolved in this dual fashion following the breakthrough legislation of 1964–68, and to try to assess the consequences.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 6 , Special Issue 1: Civil Rights , January 1994 , pp. 12 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1994

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References

Notes

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56. The main target of congressional liberals was the Supreme Court's 1989 decision in Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Antonio, in which the Court's post-1988 conservative majority revised the Griggs standard of 1971 for proving “disparate impact” discrimination. In Wards Cove a 5–4 majority shifted much of the burden of proving discrimination from employers to employees and held that employer hiring practices that produced a disparate impact on minorities need only meet a standard of reasonable “business justification,” not the stringent standard of “business necessity” set by Griggs.

57. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. at 403.

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