Managing Race in the American Workplace

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Skrentny
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
The Way

This chapter introduces the problems of the roles racial differences play in the workplace. It discusses the changes in the way Americans talk about race and what pragmatic and progressive voices say that they want since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Never before has such a wide variety of employers, advocates, activists, and government leaders in American society discussed the benefits of racial diversity and the utility of racial difference in such a broad range of contexts. Thus, the chapter points out the emerging discourse of race as a qualification for employment, and briefly details the many issues as well as the role of established laws on such an issue. It also lays out the conceptual foundations upon which the following chapters will be based on.

After Civil Rights

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Skrentny
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Immigrant Status ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Racial Realism ◽  
New Strategy

What role should racial difference play in the American workplace? As a nation, we rely on civil rights law to address this question, and the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964 seemingly answered it: race must not be a factor in workplace decisions. This book contends that after decades of mass immigration, many employers, Democratic and Republican political leaders, and advocates have adopted a new strategy to manage race and work. Race is now relevant not only in negative cases of discrimination, but in more positive ways as well. In today's workplace, employers routinely practice “racial realism,” where they view race as real—as a job qualification. Many believe employee racial differences, and sometimes immigrant status, correspond to unique abilities or evoke desirable reactions from clients or citizens. They also see racial diversity as a way to increase workplace dynamism. The problem is that when employers see race as useful for organizational effectiveness, they are often in violation of civil rights law. This book examines this emerging strategy in a wide range of employment situations, including the low-skilled sector, professional and white-collar jobs, and entertainment and media. The book urges us to acknowledge the racial realism already occurring, and lays out a series of reforms that, if enacted, would bring the law and lived experience more in line, yet still remain respectful of the need to protect the civil rights of all workers.

Justice and Empathy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Burt
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Economic Equality ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
American Society ◽  
The U.S

The Supreme Court long considered its highest mission to be the protection of individual liberty from intrusion by government, but the court shifted its focus to social and economic equality. This book explores this shift and its implications, especially for the legal protection of the vulnerable. Crucial to the author's perspective is an unconventional view of the role of judges—not simply to decide disputes, but to promote a respectful dialogue leading to a genuine understanding between parties. The U.S. Constitution, through its interpretation by the U.S. Supreme Court, deals with the protection of vulnerable people in American society. It focuses on the judge not as the sole determiner of equality or protection but as a leader who, through careful observation and guidance, promotes an interactive process among the parties in order to settle the matter in an empathic, mutually respectful way. The book points out that judges are not the only actors through whom democratic values founded on empathic mutual respect and accountability can be promoted. At the center of this study is the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

Bad Dreams and Secret Artists: Translating Freud into Literature

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Popular Approach ◽  
English Reader ◽  
Creative Writer ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This article addresses the increasingly popular approach to Freud and his work which sees him primarily as a literary writer rather than a psychologist, and takes this as the context for an examination of Joyce Crick's recent translation of The Interpretation of Dreams. It claims that translation lies at the heart of psychoanalysis, and that the many interlocking and overlapping implications of the word need to be granted a greater degree of complexity. Those who argue that Freud is really a creative writer are themselves doing a work of translation, and one which fails to pay sufficiently careful attention to the role of translation in writing itself (including the notion of repression itself as a failure to translate). Lesley Chamberlain's The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud is taken as an example of the way Freud gets translated into a novelist or an artist, and her claims for his ‘bizarre poems' are criticized. The rest of the article looks closely at Crick's new translation and its claim to be restoring Freud the stylist, an ordinary language Freud, to the English reader. The experience of reading Crick's translation is compared with that of reading Strachey's, rather to the latter's advantage.

“As Nature Has Formed Them”: The History and Current Status of Racial Difference Research

2012 ◽  
Vol 114 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-49
Author(s):  
Russell Skiba
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of

Background/Context Research in the latter half of the 20th century purporting to show significant racial differences in intelligence and social behavior appears to pit civil rights concerns against the freedom of scientific inquiry. The core hypotheses and presumptions of recent research on racial difference are not new, however, but spring from a two-century-old program of research that has sought to demonstrate racial differences in socially valued traits. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The purpose of this review was to explore the history of racial difference research in order to (1) elucidate the central themes of that research and (2) explore the reasons for the persistence of those themes into modern racial difference research. Research Design The investigation is a historical analysis of research on racial differences from the late 18th century to the present. Conclusions/Recommendations Both the methodologies and the willingness to express the core hypotheses of a fixed differential between races on socially important characteristics have changed over time, yet adherence to a set of core research questions has remained relatively unchanged across generations of researchers. Although the consistent conflation of its political and scientific aims has, to some extent, compromised the scientific status of racial difference research, consistent links to social and economic policy have also ensured its intergenerational reproduction. Convergent shifts across a number of disciplines suggest that a Kuhnian-type paradigm shift may be under way that will redefine both the strategies and the types of questions that may characterize future research in the areas of race, ethnicity, and culture.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 233-236
Author(s):  
Jana Riess
Keyword(s):  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Cultural Relevancy ◽  
Lgbt Issues ◽  
The Social ◽  
Lds Church ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Church

This concluding chapter argues that in the next few years at least, the polarization within Mormonism will continue, in which those who remain in the LDS Church will be ardent believers but those who don't fit in will pull up stakes and leave. How the Church chooses to finesse the social shifts—specifically, those regarding marriage, gender, racial diversity, and LGBT issues—will signal which trajectory it is going to follow: will it remain steadfast and become entrenched in the role of embattled subculture, or will it lean in, accommodating its message and positioning in order to retain cultural relevancy and attractiveness? The chapter then considers the acute tension the LDS Church is experiencing between assimilation into American society and retrenchment. This ever-present pendulum between assimilation and retrenchment has ensured that Mormonism has successfully maintained its distinctive edge even while making major theological deletions that might have been unthinkable to previous generations.

THINKING ABOUT ROBERT PUTNAM'S ANALYSIS OF DIVERSITY

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Kilson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Conflict Theory ◽  
Contact Theory ◽  
Social Psychologist ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
American Society ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractThe article evaluates Robert Putnam's discussion of two differing concepts of the role of the diversity perspective toward inter-ethnic/inter-racial relationships in American society since the 1960s—namely, the “contact theory” and the “conflict theory.” The former was initially formulated by Harvard social psychologist Gordon Allport in The Nature of Prejudice (1954). Putnam's analysis—published in the comparative politics journal Scandinavian Political Studies (Vol. 30, No. 2, 2007)—favors the “conflict theory,” which holds that diversity sharpens “us-against-them” inter-ethnic/inter-racial interactions. Putnam's view opposes diversity-influenced public policies. By contrast, “contact theory” holds that diversity erodes “us-against-them” interactions and thus eventually democratizes such interactions, and thereby American society generally. “Contact theory” influenced the NAACP-led civil-rights movement's quest for desegregation public policies during the 1950s, 1960s, and onward.

United States Vagrancy Laws

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Risa L. Goluboff ◽  
Adam Sorensen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
American Law ◽  
American Society ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Many ◽  
Social Upheaval ◽  
The Unemployed

The crime of vagrancy has deep historical roots in American law and legal culture. Originating in 16th-century England, vagrancy laws came to the New World with the colonists and soon proliferated throughout the British colonies and, later, the United States. Vagrancy laws took myriad forms, generally making it a crime to be poor, idle, dissolute, immoral, drunk, lewd, or suspicious. Vagrancy laws often included prohibitions on loitering—wandering around without any apparent lawful purpose—though some jurisdictions criminalized loitering separately. Taken together, vaguely worded vagrancy, loitering, and suspicious persons laws targeted objectionable “out of place” people rather than any particular conduct. They served as a ubiquitous tool for maintaining hierarchy and order in American society. Their application changed alongside perceived threats to the social fabric, at different times and places targeting the unemployed, labor activists, radical orators, cultural and sexual nonconformists, racial and religious minorities, civil rights protesters, and the poor. By the mid-20th century, vagrancy laws served as the basis for hundreds of thousands of arrests every year. But over the course of just two decades, the crime of vagrancy, virtually unquestioned for four hundred years, unraveled. Profound social upheaval in the 1960s produced a concerted effort against the vagrancy regime, and in 1972, the US Supreme Court invalidated the laws. Local authorities have spent the years since looking for alternatives to the many functions vagrancy laws once served.

Experience and its Others

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipa Rothfield
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
Active Type ◽  
Postmodern Dance ◽  
Subjective Agency ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This chapter draws on Deleuzian thought in order to think through the role of experience within dance and the activity of dancing more generally. It contrasts phenomenological approaches to dancing, which appeal to notions of subjective agency, with a Deleuzian re-reading of subjectivity. In the process, it refers to Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche, using Nietzsche’s concept of force to account for the many ways in which forces combine to produce movement. The notion of force is able to explain the way action unfolds without being the product of human agency. It offers a way of rethinking phenomenological notions of agency. According to this account, relations of force underlie action, as well as the many modes of interiority (subjectivity). But these two kinds of formation (of force) are different in kind. They belong to differing types (of force). The pursuit of action, including the utilisation of experience in action, constitutes a certain type of ethos, which Deleuze calls the active type, whereas the formation of experience belongs to ‘the reactive apparatus’, that which reacts but does not act. The active type drives a wedge between the dancing and the dancer. Deleuze’s treatment of Nietzsche can be adapted to account for the variety of dance practices, their production of training and technique, custom and virtuosity. In particular, it is able to account for the specific ways in which postmodern dance displaces the subjectivity of the dancer.

scholarly journals Commercial Counterhistory: Remapping the Movement inLee Daniels’ The Butler

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 418-446
Author(s):  
LEIGH ANNE DUCK
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political History ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
The Past ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Iconic Images ◽  
The Many

Lee Daniels’ The Butler(2013) might seem an unlikely candidate for intervening in Hollywood's civil rights genre, given both its nationalistic ending and its recuperation of iconic styles and images. This paper argues, however, that the film's pastiche interrogates past cinematic tropes for race and space; in this sense, it provescounterhistorical, a term indicating not a lack of accuracy but a commitment to illuminating the role of visual media in shaping contemporary understandings of history and to encouraging fresh perspectives on the past. Examining the many forms of constraint produced by iconic images of black and gendered personhood, the film also takes on the spatial icon with which many of these figures are associated – the southern plantation. Both exposing and challenging the ways in which spectacular accounts of southern racism occlude the geographic and political reach of African American movements against oppression, the film inconsistently insists on the importance of thinking across conventional demarcations of space and time. At these moments, it suggests possibilities for how even commercial cinema might contribute to new conceptions of black political history and possibility.

Southern Strategy 2.0

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Edge
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Impact

In the rush of excitement over Barack Obama’s nomination and ascension to the presidency of the United States, many media figures were loathe to analyze the impact of race on both the rhetoric of the election and the actual results. From across the political spectrum, pundits argued that race did not play a major role on Election Day, without offering any context to such comments. Likewise, conservatives in particular have used that idea to assert that racism is no longer a hindrance to advancement in American society. This article seeks to examine the role of race in the election, both in political attacks on Barack Obama and in an analysis of the voting patterns, with a particular emphasis on how conservatives have tried to shape the contours of these discussions. Their purpose, it is argued, is to launch Southern Strategy 2.0, which seeks to use Obama’s victory to attack some of the results of the civil rights movement that helped make his rise possible. At the same time, it still plays on some of the overt racism of the first Southern Strategy, using Obama’s racial identity and politics to challenge whether he is “American” enough to lead the nation. Thus, conservatives use Obama’s image as a sign that racism is dead, while simultaneously attacking him with the same race-based tactics that have played such an important role in the recent history of the Republican Party.

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