| Review of: | Understanding Affirmative Action: Politics, Discrimination, and the Search for Justice by J. Edward Kellough |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Hawley Fogg-Davis |
| Reviewed in: | Governance |
| Date accepted online: | 14/01/2008 |
| Published in print: | Volume 20, Issue 03, Pages 545-556 |
Book Reviews
This book stays faithful to its title. Rather than staking out a polemical or overtly normative position, Kellough meticulously sorts and elucidates the morass of antidiscrimination policies developed over the last 47 years that we now collectively refer to as "affirmative action." For this battle-scarred political debate, the only "new" or interesting thing to do is precisely what Kellough undertakes: to take advantage of retrospection and detail the forgotten and elided twists and turns in the evolution of a term whose stretching has at times threatened to render it moribund.
Like any political contest, affirmative action is a battle for scarce resources. However, we need to contextualize these battles to understand the nature of the resources at stake at a given place and time. The nature of the institution affects the nature of the affirmative action policies that get developed. Perhaps the most helpful reminder issued by Kellough is that the proliferation of affirmative action policies during the 1960s and 1970s "were an adaptation of the established management practice of responding to a problem by setting an objective and planning for its attainment" (42). In some cases, this meant setting goals and timetables in the hope of warding off governmental sanction; others were compelled, while many colleges and universities sought to promote racial diversity as integral to their educational missions. Across this spectrum, focusing on managerial response helps explain the variance of policies that have emerged under the blanket term of affirmative action.
Kellough traces the lexicon of affirmative action back to Kennedy's 1961 Executive Order 10925, which mandated government contractors and employers to take positive or affirmative "action" and "steps" that would give teeth to the negative prohibition of discrimination based on race, creed, color or national origin. This policy was a direct response to the reluctance of employees to file complaints with federal monitoring and enforcement agencies (which predated Kennedy under Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower, albeit under different names and structures) for fear of retribution. The 1964 Civil Rights Act extended the reach of federal antidiscrimination law to private employers (Title VII) and organizations receiving federal funds (Title VI). Nixon's decision to support and shore up federal affirmative action enforcement demonstrates the partisan slipperiness of this battle. Johnson's 1967 Executive Order 11375 targeted women for the first time, yet Kellough does not pause to consider
Although the book is very readable in its entirety, its chapters and tables are arranged in a way that makes it a handy reference on specific dimensions of affirmative action's development and controversy. Chapters 4 and 5, for instance, detail the "early" court cases, as well as those from 1995 to 2003. An extensive compilation of "gubernatorial executive orders addressing affirmative action in the 1990s" documents an obscured aspect of the debate. Percentage plans instituted in Texas, Florida, and California during the late 1990s that guarantee the top-ranked students in each high school a place in their state college systems are presented efficiently. Missing however is the related story of how nonprofit organizations such as the Ford and Mellon Foundations began to repackage their "racial diversity" programs and fellowships both in anticipation and in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2003 rulings in the University of Michigan cases,
After taking stock of the political and legal tributaries of affirmative action's evolution, Kellough moves into a judicious summary of the normative arguments that are its public face. Covered in these sections are philosophical approaches to redistribution and compensation, utilitarian arguments on the value of diversity, as well as the tension between individual and group rights. Kellough rightly points out the ad hoc nature of these arguments. The question that counts in the end for Kellough is not whether affirmative action is morally right or wrong, but rather the empirical question of determining whether or not a particular policy is effective in meeting a stated managerial goal. Good research design is of utmost importance in ruling out "extraneous influences," and Kellough proceeds to recapitulate those studies that best meet this criterion. Despite his resolute neutrality throughout, Kellough's sympathies finally seem to favor affirmative action, but only those programs that are "properly constructed," for these "can be an effective means of helping to ensure that society will enjoy the benefits of the great diversity this nation has to offer" (150).