Affirmative Action, Cultural Diversity, and Disability Policy Reform: Foundations to the Civil Rights of Persons with Disability

1998 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renée A. Middleton ◽  
Debra A. Harley ◽  
Carolyn W. Rollins ◽  
Tamala Solomon

The authors discuss how the impetus for rehabilitation reform historically received momentum from civil rights activities in the 1960s. The origins of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the American with Disabilities Act, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, are discussed from the political context at the time of passage. Thus, the reader comes to understand how persons with disabilities, through the independent living movement; a civil rights movement within a movement for equality, were empowered to become a major force in prompting the signing of the ADA. The paper is based on the belief that current disability legislation must be inclusive of all persons with disabilities. To that end, connections are made between affirmative action, a major vanguard of equality, cultural diversity and multiculturalism. A rational is provided for the assertion that elimination of affirmative action will have serious repercussions for the long-term effectiveness and survival of other civil rights legislation. Finally, recommendations for achieving multiculturalism are made and concluding remarks predict the outlook for the future with respect to disability services, policy and practice.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (24) ◽  
pp. 32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piers Gooding

<p align="LEFT">This review will consider recent United Nations activity on article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) concerning the right to live independently and be included in the community. The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities adopted its ‘General Comment’ No. 5 in August 2017, which offers guidance to governments on art 19 implementation. This review critically examines content relevant to mental health and capacity law, policy and practice. It considers the strengths and potential limitations of the General Comment with reference to key issues in the field. Gaps include commentary on the rising marketisation of disability services globally and a focus on low and middle-income countries. Yet overall, the General Comment offers useful guidance on implementing this unusual right, including concepts that may help resolve controversies about the role of coercion in mental health and capacity law.</p>


Author(s):  
Natsu Taylor Saito

In the 1960s, global decolonization and the civil rights movement inspired hope for structural change in the United States, but more than fifty years later, racial disparities in income and wealth, education, employment, health, housing, and incarceration remain entrenched. In addition, we have seen a resurgence of overt White supremacy following the election of President Trump. This chapter considers the potential of movements like Black Lives Matter and the Standing Rock water protectors in light of the experiences of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and other efforts at community empowerment in the “long sixties.”


Troublemakers ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Kathryn Schumaker

The introductionexplains how and why student protest became common in the United States in the late 1960s and places these protests in the context of shifts in the history of education and in broader social movements, including the civil rights movement, the Chicano Movement, and black power activism. The introduction also situates students’ rights within the context of children’s rights more broadly, explaining the legal principles that justified age discrimination and excluded children and students from the basic protections of American constitutional law. The introduction identifies the two decades between the 1960s and 1980s as a constitutional moment that revolutionized the relationship of students to the state. It also connects students’ rights litigation to the issue of school desegregation and the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.


2020 ◽  
pp. 210-236
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Delton

This chapter examines the overlap between African Americans' demands for jobs and conservatives' push for “right to work” laws. While compulsory union dues were very different from unions' exclusion of blacks, both movements targeted historically white unions and shared a language of workplace “rights.” Conservative “right to work” activists adopted the tactics of the civil rights movement and aligned themselves with blacks against exclusionary unions. Although this strategy failed to attract African Americans, it called attention to unions' historic and ongoing racism in a way that eventually divided the labor–liberal coalition. This dynamic is key to understanding the National Association of Manufacturers' complicated support for civil rights, equal opportunity, and affirmative action.


Author(s):  
Michael Suk-Young Chwe

This chapter examines African American folktales that teach the importance of strategic thinking and argues that they informed the tactics of the 1960s civil rights movement. It analyzes a number of stories where characters who do not think strategically are mocked and punished by events while revered figures skillfully anticipate others' future actions. It starts with the tale of a new slave who asks his master why he does nothing while the slave has to work all the time, even as he demonstrates his own strategic understanding. It then considers the tale of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, along with “Malitis,” which tackles the problem of how the slaves could keep the meat and eat it openly. These and other folktales teach how inferiors can exploit the cluelessness of status-obsessed superiors, a strategy that can come in handy. The chapter also discusses the real-world applications of these folktales' insights.


Author(s):  
Carol Bunch Davis

This book challenges the cultural memory of the African American Freedom Struggle era that hinges on a master narrative focused on the “heroic period” of the Civil Rights Movement. It argues that this narrative limits the representation of African American identity within the Civil Rights Movement to Martin Luther King's nonviolent protest leadership in the segregated South and casts Malcolm X's advocacy of black nationalism and the ensuing Black Power/Arts Movement as undermining civil rights advances. Through an analysis of five case studies of African American identity staged in plays between 1959 and 1969, the book instead offers representations that engage, critique, and revise racial uplift ideology and reimagine the Black Arts Movement's sometimes proscriptive notions of black authenticity as a condition of black identity and cultural production. It also posits a postblack ethos as the means by which these representations construct their counternarratives to cultural memory and broadens narrow constructions of African American identity shaping racial discourse in the U.S. public sphere of the 1960s.


2019 ◽  
pp. 301-352
Author(s):  
Steven K. Green

This chapter examines the various events that undermined the public support for church–state separation in the 1960s. It considers the impact of Vatican II, of ecumenism, of the civil rights movement, and of federal social welfare and education legislation on Protestant attitudes. All of these events encouraged Protestants and Catholics to find common ground in working for the greater societal good. These events also suggested a model of church-state cooperation rather than one of separation. The chapter then segues to consider the various church–state cases before the Supreme Court between 1968 and 1975 in which the justices began to step back from applying a strict separationist approach to church–state controversies.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAMMY L. KERNODLE

AbstractThis article explores the work of pianist/vocalist Nina Simone as the catalyst for a new type of freedom song in the black freedom movement during the 1960s. It examines the lyrical content and structure of Simone's music, which reflects the rhetorical and geographical shift of the transition from King's nonviolent, southern-based civil rights movement of the late 1950s to the mid-1960s to the militant black power nationalist movement of the late 1960s. Curtis Mayfield's Chicago soul style is also referenced as marking an important shift in mid-1960s R&B, which had largely avoided overt political statements.


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