5. Affirmative Action and Discrimination

Author(s):  
William Abel ◽  
Elizabeth Kahn ◽  
Tom Parr ◽  
Andrew Walton

This chapter argues that affirmative action is sometimes justifiable. ‘Affirmative action’ refers to policies beyond anti-discrimination law that directly regulate selection procedures to enhance the representation of members of various socially salient groups, such as those based on gender, race, and ethnicity. The chapter outlines an argument in support of affirmative action by distinguishing three prominent forms of wrongful discrimination and by showing that affirmative action is the appropriate response to the past and present wrongful discrimination suffered by members of socially salient groups. It also adds a second argument for affirmative action that appeals to the importance of enhancing diversity and social integration. The chapter then tackles several objections and reflects on the implications of these arguments for the design of affirmative action policies.

Author(s):  
Shardé M. Davis

Investigating the role of physiology in communication research is a burgeoning area of study that has gained considerable attention by relational scholars in the past decade. Unfortunately, very few published studies on this topic have evoked important questions about the role of race and ethnicity. Exploring issues of ethnicity and race provides a more holistic and inclusive view of interpersonal communication across diverse groups and communities. This chapter addresses the gap in literature by considering the ways in which race and ethnicity matter in work on physiology and interpersonal interactions. More specifically, this chapter will first discuss the conceptual underpinnings of race, ethnicity, and other relevant concepts and then review extant research within and beyond the field of communication on race, ethnicity, interpersonal interactions, and physiology. These discussions set the foundation for this chapter to propose new lines of research that pointedly connect these four concepts and advance key principles that scholars should consider in future work.


2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1067-1088
Author(s):  
KRISTOFER ALLERFELDT

Over the past thirty years or so the study of American fraternity has been used to explore a variety of phenomena in the nation's evolution, especially around the turn of the twentieth century. Fraternities have been used to understand the exploration, taming and exploitation of the West. They have been shown to represent proof of the various turn-of-the century crises of gender, race and ethnicity. They have been seen as the very embodiment of bygone caring, sharing, communities. However, among the aspects to have escaped attention is the importance of fraternity in criminal organizations. Given that crime, then as now, was seen as one of the most pressing of social issues, and given that over these years there was a deep suspicion that there were a variety of ultra-secret fraternities organizing, facilitating and manipulating wide-ranging criminal activities, this may be considered a little odd. This article investigates the idea that there was really such a thing as a genuine criminal “fraternity.” Looking at three of the most famous of such organizations – the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the Molly Maguires and the Mafia – it demonstrates that not only were ideas of fraternity central to their very existence, but they are also crucial to our understanding both of them and of the period in which they were situated.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 237802312096781
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Scheitle ◽  
Elaine Howard Ecklund

While concerns about the consequences of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of religious bias have grown in the past several years, the data available to examine these issues have been limited. This study utilizes new data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults featuring oversamples of key religious minority groups and an instrument dedicated to measuring the extent to which individuals experience hostility, discrimination, and violence due to their religion. Findings show that, while a sizable minority of Christian adults report such experiences, a much greater share of Muslim and Jewish adults report experiences with interpersonal hostility, organizational discrimination, and violent victimization due to their religion. Analyses show that these patterns are largely unchanged after accounting for individuals’ race and ethnicity, national origin, and other characteristics, suggesting that experiences with religious hostility are not epiphenomenal to other social locations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-266
Author(s):  
Richard J. Reddick

William Banks’ 1984 article “Afro-American Scholars in the University” situated Black faculty at predominantly White institutions in a milieu noting the uses and misuses of Black scholars, constituencies in conflict, the range of responses from Black scholars, and the standards and realities for their advancement in academia. Banks further discussed the stigma of affirmative action and the burden of symbolism for Black faculty. This article, written in the #BlackLivesMatter and Trump era, engages with the same questions that Banks raised 34 years prior. This response expands the context to the field of urban education, and Black urban educators in the academy particularly, through an analysis of community engagement experiences, the burdens of cultural taxation, and the impact of affirmative action in a post-Fisher political context. Incorporating events both inside and outside of academia, the author considers the centrality of creating spaces of resistance and leveraging the gains for Black academics over the past three decades to alter the standards of the academy to support Black scholars and their allies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peta S. Cook

Traditionally, sociology has framed older age as a time of disengagement, withdrawal and reduced social integration. While now largely dismissed in contemporary sociological understandings of ageing, narratives of decline still feature heavily across social, media, and medical discourses. This negativity towards ageing could be at odds with how older people experience their age and identity. In this article, I will explore how 16 older people construct their self-identity. Drawing on participant-generated imagery and interview data, this article exposes that they experience older age as a time of continuity, discovery, possibility and change, where identity is multiple and fluid, and emerges through the links they make between the past, present and future. Thus, while ageing is not without its difficulties, the research participants challenge the social myths that reductively and negatively frame older age by constructing an identity that builds on their past through an active exploration of new possibilities and experiences.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (e1) ◽  
pp. e173-e177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Peacock ◽  
Ashok Reddy ◽  
Suzanne G Leveille ◽  
Jan Walker ◽  
Thomas H Payne ◽  
...  

Background: Access to online patient portals is key to improving care, but we have limited understanding of patient perceptions of online portals and the characteristics of people who use them. Methods: Using a national survey of 3677 respondents, we describe perceptions and utilization of online personal health information (PHI) portals. Results: Most respondents (92%) considered online PHI access important, yet only 34% were offered access to online PHI by a health care provider, and just 28% accessed online PHI in the past year. While there were no differences across race or ethnicity in importance of access, black and Hispanic respondents were significantly less likely to be offered access (P = .006 and <.001, respectively) and less likely to access their online PHI (P = .041 and <.001, respectively) compared to white and non-Hispanic respondents. Conclusion: Health care providers are crucial to the adoption and use of online patient portals and should be encouraged to offer consistent access regardless of patient race and ethnicity.


1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubén G. Rumbaut

In at least one sense the “American century” is ending much as it had begun: the United States has again become a nation of immigrants, and it is again being transformed in the process. But the diversity of the “new immigration” to the United States over the past three decades differs in many respects from that of the last period of mass immigration in the first three decades of the century. The immigrants themselves differ greatly in their social class and national origins, and so does the American society, polity, and economy that receives them—raising questions about their modes of incorporation, and challenging conventional accounts of assimilation processes that were framed during that previous epoch. The dynamics and future course of their adaptation are open empirical questions—as well as major questions for public policy, since the outcome will shape the future contours of American society. Indeed, as the United States undergoes its most profound demographic transformation in a century; as inexorable processes of globalization, especially international migrations from Asia, Africa, and the Americas, diversify still further the polyethnic composition of its population; and as issues of immigration, race and ethnicity become the subject of heated public debate, the question of incorporation, and its serious study, becomes all the more exigent. The essays in this special issue of Sociological Perspectives tackle that subject from a variety of analytical vantages and innovative approaches, covering a wide range of groups in major areas of immigrant settlement. Several of the papers focus specifically on Los Angeles and New York City, where, remarkably, fully a quarter of the total U.S. immigrant population resides.


2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-34
Author(s):  
John L. Festervand ◽  
Troy A. Festervand

This paper explores the University of Alabama's positions, actions, policies, and accomplishments over the past forty years with respect to minority representation among its students and faculty. The impact and progression of these initiatives by the University of Alabama demonstrates strides have been made. The paper also examines the University's recruiting efforts to attract more minority faculty and students. The transition from integration to affirmative action to diversity in higher education also are examined.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Sinclair Atterbury

There is an urgent need to provide, maintain and revitalize social housing in Canada. Statistics show that an alarming percentage of Toronto's population lives in poverty. 71,000 families are currently on the social-housing waiting list and 150,000 to 300,000 Canadians are homeless. This research provides a critical analysis of the past and existing issues surrounding the design and function of social housing communities. In response to the issues outlined, this study identifies a need for the design of mixed-activity, 'integrated neighbourhoods' rather than isolated social housing schemes. The thesis proposes an architectural solution that draws on five guiding principles (modes of integration) of design. Integration of movement, open spaces, physical structures, social integration, and integrated sustainable systems were the five categories used to examine the level of intervention necessary for the revitalization of a selected site; Alexandra Park, Toronto, Canada.


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