The Origins of Affirmative Action: Civil Rights and the Regulatory State

Abstract

Affirmative action policy developed during the 1960s and 1970s in two phases that embodied conflicting traditions of government regulation. The first phase, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, was shaped by the presidency and Congress and emphasized nondiscrimination under a “race-blind Constitution,” The second phase, shaped primarily by federal agencies and courts, witnessed a shift toward minority preferences during the Nixon administration. The development of two new agencies created to enforce the Civil Rights Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under Title VII and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance under Title VI, demonstrates the tensions between the two regulatory traditions and the evolution of federal policy from nondiscrimination to minority preferences under the rubric of affirmative action. The result has strengthened the economic and political base of the civil rights coalition while weakening its moral claims in public opinion.

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References

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2. Hugh Davis Graham , The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960-1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 450-476.

Paul H. Norgren and Samuel E. Hill , Toward Fair Employment (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964).

4. The most comprehensive study of state and municipal fair-employment commissions is Morroe Berger , Equality by Statute: The Revolution in Civil Rights (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1978).

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8. Graham , Civil Rights Era, pp. 145-152.

9. Ibid., pp. 150-51.

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10. Humphrey , quoted in U.S., Congress, Senate , Congressional Record, 88th Cong., 2d sess., 4 June 1964, pt. 10, pp. 12723-12724.

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11. Charles Whalen and Barbara Whalen , The Longest Debate: Legislative History of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Cabin John, MD: Seven Locks Press, 1985).

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12. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Washington, DC: Bureau of National Affairs, 1964).

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13. Michael I. Sovern , Legal Restraints on Racial Discrimination in Employment (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1966), p. 88.

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14. Title VI, Nondiscrimination in Federally Assisted Programs, § 601.

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15. Public Papers of the Presidents: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1965), 2:636.

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16. Graham , Civil Rights Era, pp. 180-189.

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17. William B. Gould , Black Workers in White Unions (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), pp. 172-188.

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19. Julie Roy Jeffrey , Education for the Children of the Poor (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1977).

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23. Graham , Civil Rights Era, pp. 322-345.

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24. J. Harvie Wilkinson III , From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 115-118.

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25. The OFCC's Philadelphia Plan was upheld in federal appeals court in Contractors Association of Eastern Pennsylvania v. Secretary of Labor, 442 F.2d 1959 (3rd Cir. 1971); the Supreme Court denied certiorari in the autumn of 1971.

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27. John J. Donohue III and James Heckman , “Continuous Versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks,” Journal of Economic Literature, 29:1603-1643 (Dec. 1991).

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28. Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson , Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).

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29. Feminist leaders of the 1960s and 1970s routinely supported affirmative action but not gender preferences. The Equal Rights Amendment drive was rooted in nondiscrimination. Affirmative action for feminists, for example, meant aggressive enforcement of Title IX of the education amendments of 1972, where contract compliance required equal opportunity for women in graduate and professional school admissions and in intercollegiate athletics. See Hugh Davis Graham , Civil Rights and the Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 232-234.

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30. William Julius Wilson , The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

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31. Jeremy Rabkin , “Office for Civil Rights,” in The Politics of Regulation, ed. James Q. Wilson (New York: Basic Books, 1980), pp. 304-353.