The Affirmative Action Puzzle

November 4, 2019
Urofsky (Dissent and the Supreme Court), a professor emeritus of history at VCU, examines the political, social, legal, and economic ramifications of affirmative action in this perceptive and deeply researched study. Starting with JFK’s 1961 executive order requiring government contractors to “take affirmative action” to ensure equal employment opportunities regardless of “race, color, creed, or national origin,” Urofsky charts the evolution of the policy from a “soft” program designed to achieve “equality of opportunity” to a “hard” program that set quotas in order to obtain “equality of results.” Urofsky traces the causes of the shift to efforts by civil rights leaders, politicians, and business interests to “reverse the legacy of Jim Crow.” Though “numbers-driven plan” can be effective, Urofsky writes, they fuel charges of “reverse discrimination” and undermine the idea that minority candidates can succeed on their own merits. Urofsky analyzes the Supreme Court’s stance (strict quotas are unconstitutional; “holistic” practices that consider an applicant’s minority status among other factors are legal) and tracks how politicians have used affirmative action as a “wedge issue.“ His evenhanded approach provides essential historical context, but few definitive answers on the efficacy of affirmative action. Readers with a deep connection to the issue will appreciate this judicious deep dive. Agent: Nick Mullendore, Vertical Ink Agency.

November 1, 2019
Can equality be legislated? So asks this thoroughgoing examination of legal efforts to rectify racial injustice through affirmative action. Many discussions of affirmative action have been derailed through simple confusion of terms, writes Urofsky (Emeritus, History/Virginia Commonwealth Univ.; Dissent and the Supreme Court: Its Role in the Court's History and the Nation's Constitutional Dialogue, 2015). There's "soft" affirmative action, which encourages equality by way of what amounts to goodwill, and then "hard" affirmative action, which imposes equality by way of quotas and makes it a zero-sum game. In the instance of hard affirmative action, he writes, consider what might happen if Jews were limited entrance by quota into certain professions even as, because of educational success, they lead in several areas of law, medicine, and the like. It's for that reason that when, in 1970, the federal Equal Economic Opportunity Commission began pushing for hard, quota-based reforms, "every single national Jewish organization protested." Urofsky's comprehensive survey examines early efforts at affirmative action, a phrase that appears for the first time in the 1935 Wagner Act but some of whose outlines were in place in the Reconstruction era and during World War I, when women workers replaced men in factories. Urofsky notes that while the literature has emphasized the African American experience, affirmative action has extended to include other groups and has occasioned enough controversy in most instances to lend credence to Justice Harry Blackmun's observation that "in order to get past race and gender, we have to take race and gender into account." The author doesn't stake an advocacy position, for the most part, except to note that in the strictest terms, hard/quota affirmative action is a violation of Title VII and "of the constitutional order, namely, that rights are individual." He also observes that in recent quota decisions affecting, for instance, the admission of Asian Americans into elite universities, limiting their number has had the unintended consequence of benefiting white males who otherwise might not have made the cut. A must-read for anyone interested in the history of affirmative action and its associated legal conundrums.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2020

Urofsky (emeritus, history, Virginia Commonwealth Univ.; Dissent and the Supreme Court) seeks to provide context for understanding the history of affirmative action, along with the policy's successes and failures. The book opens with a review of the immediate challenges of abolishing slavery. Simply outlawing chattel bondage with the 13th Amendment in 1865 was not enough for some, yet clearly too much for others, Urofsky notes. Persistent arguments have ensued about what rights, remedies, and restrictions U.S. law should provide to protect people from what is considered to be discrimination, the author explains. While civil rights are often centered on race, Urofsky notes that gender, ethnicity, disability, and sexual orientation have shared in the contention that persists in demonstrating deep divisions among Americans who disagree on the meaning of discrimination. Focused on federal law, particularly U.S. Supreme Court cases, this narrative recollects continuous conflicts within an undeniably long history of disparate treatment. VERDICT This book purposely offers more questions than answers as Urofsky leads us to consider how law should best combat the legacies of racism, sexism, and ableism in order to open doors of opportunity to previously excluded groups. A thought-provoking read.--Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2019
Affirmative action as policy and practice has been the subject of much debate since its inception. In this scholarly, comprehensive, thoroughly engaging study, Urofsky (Dissent and the Supreme Court, 2015) traces the legal and legislative evolution of affirmative action, from the initiatives offered under the Civil War's Freedmen's Bureau and various New Deal programs. Further on, he examines the executive orders signed by presidents Kennedy and Johnson and ends by scrutinizing our contemporary understanding and adoption of these ground-breaking laws. Urofsky reviews soft and hard approaches undertaken to legitimize affirmative action and details efforts used to correct discriminatory practices, equalize opportunities, and identify the "protected class" which would be covered under the policies. The primary intent of affirmative action was not just to right wrongs but also to bring about economic prosperity through equal access to education and employment. Urofsky highlights various Supreme Court cases, seminal moments, and historical individuals to convey a broader view of this consequential mandate. Urofsky presents a balanced and nuanced view of the issue on many fronts, delving into affirmation-action controversies, especially in cases involving higher education. Urofsky's extensively researched account explores the magnitude of affirmative action for the many groups which have faced discrimination.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)