The Title VII provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits private employers from discriminating against either employees or job applicants on the basis of race, religion, gender, and country of national origin. However, Title VII does not place an affirmative obligation on employers to increase the diversity of their organizations. In September 1965, President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, which prohibited federal contractors from discriminating against both employees and applicants for positions on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin. Two years later, the Johnson administration amended the language of the executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of gender as well, and directed federal contractors to take affirmative steps to increase the diversity of their organizations in the areas of race, gender, and national origin.
Throughout the 1970s, Republican and Democratic presidential administrations strongly supported affirmative action programs. Both Republican president Richard Nixon (1969–1974) and Democratic president Jimmy Carter (1977–1981) continued the federal government’s commitment to increasing the diversity of government agencies. In October 1978, for example, President Carter signed into law the Civil Service Reform Act, which required all federal agencies to take affirmative steps to increase the number of members of underrepresented groups in their organizations.
Despite strong presidential and congressional support for affirmative action programs, the late 1970s saw a grassroots backlash against programs designed to give underrepresented minorities a preference in hiring for government jobs. Critics of affirmative action argued that such programs violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, an argument supported by the Supreme Court in University of California v. Bakke (1978). The court ruled that the admission policy of the university’s law school, which gave African American applicants preference in admissions, violated Section VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The decision signaled the beginning of strict scrutiny of government-mandated affirmative action programs by the Supreme Court.
The public backlash against affirmative action coincided with bad economic times; the energy crisis of the late 1970s contributed to a sluggish economy and job losses, particularly in the manufacturing sector. Large numbers of blue-collar workers lost their jobs to lower-priced foreign competition, most notably in the automotive industry. The Campaign of 1980 marked the end of the consensus between the Republican and Democratic parties on affirmative action. The 1980 Republican Party platform included a plank that opposed any government-mandated hiring quotas for minorities. In contrast, the 1980 Democratic Party platform included a plank reaffirming affirmative action programs as necessary remedies correcting the historical injustice of discriminatory hiring practices. Not surprisingly, the Democratic platform in the Campaign of 1984 continued to promote affirmative action as a means to “repair the legacy of discrimination in American society,” whereas the Republican platform sharply criticized the use of “quotas” as inherently unfair.
These partisan differences reflected sharply different beliefs about the role of government in society, as well as differences in the core elements of each party’s political coalition. While Americans are generally supportive of the notion of societal equality, how this is to be accomplished is an enduring source of conflict. Conservatives, in large measure, support “equality of opportunity” policies, in which the government attempts to level the playing field but does not act in a way that influences societal outcomes. Liberals are more concerned with “equality of outcomes,” or the distribution of opportunities and rewards in society, predominantly supporting government remedies addressing inequalities. In addition to these philosophical differences, the Republican Party during this era relied heavily on white voters (particularly white males), whereas racial minorities represent an increasingly larger segment of the Democratic Party.
In the Campaigns of 1984 and 1988, President Reagan and Vice President Bush, respectively, used affirmative action as part of a broader strategy designed to depict the Democratic Party and their nominees, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, respectively, as too liberal. As a result, many blue-collar and working-class partisans who had voted Democratic from the New Deal through the 1970s found their party loyalties challenged. Some of these voters defected to the Republican Party during this era, while others may have avoided the polls entirely. While the Republican Party was able to successfully characterize the Democrats as out of touch with (white) Middle America, this strategy was also effective because whites still constituted 86 percent of the electorate when President Reagan was reelected in 1984. Republican candidates after the Reagan-Bush era faced a very different, more racially diverse pool of voters.
From the Campaign of 1992 onward, affirmative action did not play a direct role in either Democratic or Republican campaigns. A series of Supreme Court decisions starting in the late 1980s and continuing through the present day has sharply limited the government’s ability to give preference to members of underrepresented groups in hiring, admissions to colleges and universities, and awarding of government contracts. In 1997, California voters approved a constitutional amendment banning all forms of affirmative action in public employment, higher education, and public contracting. In 2008, voters in Nebraska approved a similar ban on affirmative action, while Colorado voters refused to impose a ban. The Supreme Court upheld Michigan’s 2006 ban in 2012, in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action. In Schuette, the Court affirmed the right of Michigan voters to ban affirmative action via referendum.
While no longer debated overtly as a policy, concerns about affirmative action simmer beneath the surface of American politics. Paradoxically, while whites still constitute a majority of the electorate (74% in 2008 and 72% in 2012), many whites are concerned about their loss of political and economic power at the same time that members of ethnic minority groups and women find themselves facing less discrimination. A 2014 survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 52 percent of white Americans believed that discrimination against whites constituted a social problem as serious as discrimination against minorities. This view was more likely to be expressed by conservatives, with 76 percent of Tea Party identifiers and 61 percent of Republicans believing that anti-white discrimination was a serious problem, up from a similar survey four years previously. White Independents (53%) and white Democrats (37%) were far less likely to subscribe to this belief. White men were more likely to see discrimination against whites than were white women; this view also tended to increase with age and decreased as a function of education. Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants were more likely to claim that discrimination against whites was a problem than other denominations.
At the same time, many whites appear to be indifferent to the enduring problems of racism in American society. A 2013 study by the Pew Research Center evaluated perceptions of discrimination against African Americans by the police, in housing, in employment, in the criminal justice system, in public schools, in voting, in obtaining health care, and in receiving service in restaurants and stores. The study found that 49 percent of all whites believed that African Americans experienced no discrimination in any of these areas (whereas only 13% of blacks and 24% of Latinos shared this perception). Whites were less likely to perceive discrimination against African Americans if they were male, lived in a rural location, and self-identified as ideologically conservative. Sixty percent of white Republicans claim that African Americans experience no racial discrimination whatsoever, approximately twice the rate of white Democrats (and similar to the findings of the Public Religion Research Institute Survey). Thus, it appears that conservative and Republican voters are less cognizant of, or less concerned about, discrimination against non-whites, and substantially more likely to view whites, who remain numerically and culturally dominant, as being marginalized.
These differing perceptions of power and threat underlie the parties’ policy differences on immigration and on civil rights, and their preference for nostalgia for a past era as opposed to one that embraces sociodemographic change.
See also Campaign of 1996; Campaign of 2000; Immigration Issue; Race Relations Issue; Tea Party Movement; Wedge Issue
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