Affirmative Action Around the World

Affirmative Action Around the World
Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780300107753

An eminent authority presents a new perspective on affirmative action in a provocative book that will stir fresh debate about this vitally important issue

Affirmative Action Matters

Affirmative Action Matters
Author: Laura Dudley Jenkins
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2014-04-04
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317748468

Affirmative Action Matters focuses specifically on affirmative action policies in higher education admissions, the sphere that has been the most controversial in many of the nations that have such policies. It brings together distinguished scholars from diverse nations to examine and discuss the historical, political and philosophical contexts of affirmative action and clarify policy developments to further the meaningful equality of educational opportunity. This unique volume includes both well established and emerging policies from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, policies which developed under a variety of political systems and target a range of underrepresented groups, based on race, ethnicity, gender, class, social background, or region. Accessible and thought provoking case studies of affirmative action demonstrate that such policies are expanding to different countries and target populations. While some countries, such as India, have affirmative action policies that predate those in the United States, affirmative action is a recent development in countries such as Brazil and France. Legal or political pressures to move away from explicitly race-based policies in several countries have complicated affirmative action and make this assessment of international alternatives particularly timely. New or newly modified policies target a variety of disadvantaged groups, based on geography, class, or caste, in addition to race or sex. International scholars in six countries spanning five continents offer insights into their own countries’ experiences to examine the implications of policy shifts from race toward other categories of disadvantage, to consider best practices in student admission policies, and to assess the future of affirmative action.

Affirmative Action, Ethnicity and Conflict

Affirmative Action, Ethnicity and Conflict
Author: Edmund Terence Gomez
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2012-11-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136157182

In recent years a number of countries have introduced affirmative action programmes in order to put right historical injustices and economic inequalities involving ethnic communities. This book examines affirmative action programmes in a range of countries around the world. It discusses how such programmes came about and how they have been implemented, and examines their effectiveness. Throughout it explores how far affirmative action programmes reinforce ethnic identities and thereby contribute to division and conflict. The countries covered are India, the United States, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Brazil, Malaysia and Fiji.

Affirmative Action Around the World

Affirmative Action Around the World
Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0300128355

The Constitution of Empire offers a constitutional and historical survey of American territorial expansion from the founding era to the present day. The authors describe the Constitution's design for territorial acquisition and governance and examine the ways in which practice over the past two hundred years has diverged from that original vision. Noting that most of America's territorial acquisitions - including the Louisiana Purchase, the Alaska Purchase, and the territory acquired after the Mexican-American and Spanish-American Wars - resulted from treaties, the authors elaborate a Jeffersonian-based theory of the federal treaty power and assess American territorial acquisitions from this perspective. They find that at least one American acquisition of territory and many of the basic institutions of territorial governance have no constitutional foundation, and they explore the often strange paths that constitutional law has travelled to permit such deviations from the Constitution's original meaning.

Affirmative Action Policies and Judicial Review Worldwide

Affirmative Action Policies and Judicial Review Worldwide
Author: George Gerapetritis
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2015-08-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 331922395X

This book discusses affirmative action or positive discrimination, defined as measures awarding privileges to certain groups that have historically suffered discrimination or have been underrepresented in specific social sectors. The book’s underlying rationale is that one cannot place at the same starting point people who have been treated differently in the past because in this way one merely perpetuates a state of difference and, in turn, social gaps are exaggerated and social cohesion is endangered. Starting out with an introduction on the meaning and typology of affirmative action policies, the book goes on to emphasise the interaction of affirmative action with traditional values of liberal state, such as equality, meritocracy, democracy, justice, liberalism and socialism. It reveals the affirmative action goals from a legal and sociological point of view, examining the remedial, cultural, societal, pedagogical and economy purposes of such action. After applying an institutional narrative of the implementation of affirmative action worldwide, the book explains the jurisprudence on the issue through syntheses and antitheses of structural and material variables, such as the institutional recognition of the policies, the domains of their implementation and their beneficiaries. The book eventually makes an analytical impact assessment following the implementation of affirmative action plans and the judicial response, especially in relation to the conventional human rights doctrine, by establishing a liaison between affirmative action and social and group rights.. The book applies a multi-disciplinary and comparative methodology in order to assess the ethical standing of affirmative action policies, the public interests involved and their effectiveness towards actual equality. In the light of the above analysis, the monograph explains the arguments considering affirmative action as a theology for substantive equality and the arguments treating this policy as anathema for liberalism. A universal discussion currently at its peak.

Affirmative Action for the Future

Affirmative Action for the Future
Author: James Sterba
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2011-01-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0801457602

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.

The Affirmative Action Puzzle

The Affirmative Action Puzzle
Author: Melvin I. Urofsky
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2020-01-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1101870885

A rich, multifaceted history of affirmative action from the Civil Rights Act of 1866 through today’s tumultuous times From acclaimed legal historian, author of a biography of Louis Brandeis (“Remarkable” —Anthony Lewis, The New York Review of Books, “Definitive”—Jeffrey Rosen, The New Republic) and Dissent and the Supreme Court (“Riveting”—Dahlia Lithwick, The New York Times Book Review), a history of affirmative action from its beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to the first use of the term in 1935 with the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) to 1961 and John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925, mandating that federal contractors take “affirmative action” to ensure that there be no discrimination by “race, creed, color, or national origin” down to today’s American society. Melvin Urofsky explores affirmative action in relation to sex, gender, and education and shows that nearly every public university in the country has at one time or another instituted some form of affirmative action plan--some successful, others not. Urofsky traces the evolution of affirmative action through labor and the struggle for racial equality, writing of World War I and the exodus that began when some six mil­lion African Americans moved northward between 1910 and 1960, one of the greatest internal migrations in the country’s history. He describes how Harry Truman, after becoming president in 1945, fought for Roosevelt’s Fair Employment Practice Act and, surprising everyone, appointed a distinguished panel to serve as the President’s Commission on Civil Rights, as well as appointing the first black judge on a federal appeals court in 1948 and, by executive order later that year, ordering full racial integration in the armed forces. In this important, ambitious, far-reaching book, Urofsky writes about the affirmative action cases decided by the Supreme Court: cases that either upheld or struck down particular plans that affected both governmental and private entities. We come to fully understand the societal impact of affirmative action: how and why it has helped, and inflamed, people of all walks of life; how it has evolved; and how, and why, it is still needed.

The Ironies of Affirmative Action

The Ironies of Affirmative Action
Author: John D. Skrentny
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1996-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780226761787

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.

Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action
Author: Susan Meyer
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2017-12-15
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1538380153

Affirmative action includes policies and laws meant to give equal footing to minorities after historic discrimination and oppression. Learn about the history of affirmative action from just after the Civil War through important milestones of the civil rights movement and on to today. Enhanced with accessible text and historical photographs, this guide explains affirmative action through its background, key players, and Supreme Court decisions. The debate about affirmative action is covered in a thoughtful, well-rounded, and timely manner since it remains a controversial issue.