This book seeks to develop and analyze in detail a key paradox of affirmative action in higher education, employment, and government contracting. This paradox is that the two chief justifications for affirmative action - compensation for past discrimination and achievement of diversity - each raise difficult problems from the point of view of a coherent, neutral, and universalistic legal determination. In addition, a third possible justification, that of achieving a society that is truly colour-blind or without consciousness of race, cannot be achieved by race-based affirmative action policies. As a result of this paradox, it is necessary that the justification of affirmative action policies is not transparent. The process must conceal the way in which it is actually carried out, using means that perhaps violate our common ideas of law based on neutral and universalistic standards, as well as our common commitment to merit-based selection processes

Perry argues that racism in America has moved into a new phase--post-intentional For a nation that often optimistically claims to be post-racial, we are still mired in the practices of racial inequality that plays out in law, policy, and in our local communities. One of two explanations is often given for this persistent phenomenon: On the one hand, we might be hypocritical-saying one thing, and doing or believing another; on the other, it might have little to do with us individually but rather be inherent to the structure of American society. More Beautiful and More Terrible compels us to think beyond this insufficient dichotomy in order to see how racial inequality is perpetuated. Imani Perry asserts that the U.S. is in a new and distinct phase of racism that is "post-intentional": neither based on the intentional discrimination of the past, nor drawing upon biological concepts of race. Drawing upon the insights and tools of critical race theory, social policy, law, sociology and cultural studies, she demonstrates how post-intentional racism works and maintains that it cannot be addressed solely through the kinds of structural solutions of the Left or the values arguments of the Right. Rather, the author identifies a place in the middle-a space of "righteous hope"-and articulates a notion of ethics and human agency that will allow us to expand and amplify that hope. To paraphrase James Baldwin, when talking about race, it is both more terrible than most think, but also more beautiful than most can imagine, with limitless and open-ended possibility. Perry leads readers down the path of imagining the possible and points to the way forward.

This book discusses pedagogical solutions that enable students to see how capitalist processes and economic inequalities intersect and shape our assumptions and behaviours. The contributors provide thoughtful reflections on the struggles and opportunities instructors face in teaching about these topics while competing against the invisibility of capitalist forces and prevalent social myths, such as "anyone who works hard can achieve". This book will not only help instructors empower students to recognize economic injustice and its interaction with capitalist organization, but also develops and acts on transformative solutions. Through analysis of the classed dimensions of the current political, economics, and cultural climate, as well as presenting novel lesson plans and classroom activities, this book is of great value for college and university professors.

In this succinct overview of the evolution of human society, career diplomat Carl Coon argues that the 21st century will witness a crucially important and difficult transition for the human race. Blending the disciplines of anthropology and evolutionary psychology with the experience of over thirty years in the diplomatic corps, Coon makes a persuasive case that no time in the history of the planet has been more critical since the emergence of language, some fifty thousand years ago.

No American city's history better illustrates both the possibilities for alternative racial models and the role of the law in shaping racial identity than New Orleans, Louisiana, which prior to the Civil War was home to America's most privileged community of people of African descent. In the eyes of the law, New Orleans's free people of color did not belong to the same race as enslaved Africans and African-Americans. While slaves were "negroes," free people of color were gens de couleur libre, creoles of color, or simply creoles. New Orleans's creoles of color remained legally and culturally distinct from "negroes" throughout most of the nineteenth century until state mandated segregation lumped together descendants of slaves with descendants of free people of color. Much of the recent scholarship on New Orleans examines what race relations in the antebellum period looked as well as why antebellum Louisiana's gens de couleur enjoyed rights and privileges denied to free blacks throughout most of the United States. This book, however, is less concerned with the what and why questions than with how people of color, acting within institutions of power, shaped those institutions in ways beyond their control. As its title suggests, Making Race in the Courtroom argues that race is best understood not as a category, but as a process. It seeks to demonstrate the role of free people of African-descent, interacting within the courts, in this process.

The South African case of Harris v. (Donges) Minister of the Interior is one familiar to most students of British constitutional law. The case was triggered by the South African government's attempt in the 1950s to disenfranchise non-white voters on the Cape province. It is still referred to as the case which illustrates that as a matter of constitutional doctrine it is not possible for the United Kingdom Parliament to produce a statute which limits the powers of successive Parliaments. The purpose of this book is twofold. First of all it offers a rather fuller picture of the story lying behind the Harris litigation,and the process of British acquisition of and dis-engagement from the government of its 'white' colonies in southern Africa as well as the ensuing emergence and consolidation of apartheid as a system of political and social organisation. Secondly the book attempts to use the South African experience to address broader contemporary British concerns about the nature of our Constitution and the role of the courts and legislature in making the Constitution work. In pursuing this second aim, the author has sought to create a counterweight to the traditional marginalistion of constitutional law and theory within the British polity. The Harris saga conveys better than any episode of British political history the enormous significance of the choices a country makes (or fails to make) when it embarks upon the task of creating or revising its constitutional arrangements. This, then, is a searching re-examination of the fundamentals of constitution-making, written in the light of the British government's commitment to promoting wholesale constitutional reform.

This study offers a fresh perspective on the 'comfort women' debates. It argues that the system can be understood as the mechanism of the intersectional oppression of gender, race, class and colonialism, while illuminating the importance of testimonies of victim-survivors as the site where women recover and gain their voices and agencies.

"Equality of opportunity for all" is a fine piece of political rhetoric but the ideal that lies behind it is slippery to say the least. Some see it as an alternative to a more robust form of egalitarianism, whilst others think that when it is properly understood it provides us with a real radical vision of what it is to level the playing field. This book combines a meritocratic conception of equality of opportunity that governs access to advantaged social positions, with redistributive principles that seek to mitigate the effects of differences in people's circumstances. Taken together, these spell out what it is to level the playing field in the way that justice requires. Oxford Political Theory presents the best new work in contemporary political theory. It is intended to be broad in scope, including original contributions to political philosophy, and also work in applied political theory. The series will contain works of outstanding quality with no restriction as to approach or subject matter. Series Editors: Will Kymlicka, David Miller, and Alan Ryan

The Constitution of the United States, writes Bryan Fair, was a series of compromises between white male propertyholders: Southern planters and Northern merchants. At the heart of their deals was a clear race-conscious intent to place the interests of whites above those of blacks.

In this provocative and important book, Fair, the eighth of ten children born to a single mother on public assistance in an Ohio ghetto, combines two histories--America's and his own- -to offer a compelling defense of affirmative action. How can it be, Fair asks, that, after hundreds of years of racial apartheid during which whites were granted 100% quotas to almost all professions, we have now convinced ourselves that, after a few decades of remedial affirmative action, the playing field is now level? Centuries of racial caste, he argues, cannot be swept aside in a few short years.

Fair ambitiously surveys the most common arguments for and against affirmative action. He argues that we must distinguish between America in the pre-Civil Rights Movement era--when the law of the land was explicitly anti-black--and today's affirmative action policies--which are decidedly not anti- white. He concludes that the only just and effective way in which to account for America's racial past and to negotiate current racial quagmires is to embrace a remedial affirmative action that relies neither on quotas nor fiery rhetoric, but one which takes race into account alongside other pertinent factors.

Championing the model of diversity on which the United States was purportedly founded, Fair serves up a personal and persuasive account of why race-conscious policies are the most effective way to end de facto segregation and eliminate racial caste.

Table of Contents

A Note to the Reader
Acknowledgments
Preface: Telling Stories
Recasting Remedies as Diseases
Color-Blind Justice
The Design of This Book
Pt. 1. A Personal Narrative
Not White Enough
Dee
Black Columbus
Racial Poverty
Man-Child
Colored Matters
Coded Schools
Busing
Going Home
Equal Opportunity
The Character of Color
Diversity as One Factor
The Deception of Color Blindness
Pt. 2. White Privilege and Black Despair: The Origins of Racial Caste in America
The Declaration of Inferiority
Marginal Americans
Inventing American Slavery
The Road to Constitutional Caste
Losing Second-Class Citizenship
Reconstruction and Sacrifice
Separate and Unequal
The Color Line
Critiquing Color Blindness
Pt. 3. The Constitutionality of Remedial Affirmative Action
The Origins of Remedial Affirmative Action
The Court of Last Resort
The Invention of Reverse Discrimination
The Politics of Affirmative Action: Myth or Reality?
Racial Realism
Eliminating Caste
Afterword
Notes
Index

Musa Okwonga - a young Black man who grew up in a predominantly working-class town - was not your typical Eton College student. The experience moulded him, challenged him... but also made him wonder why a place that was so good for him also seems to contribute to the harm being done to the UK. The more he searched, the more evident the connection became between one of Britain's most prestigious institutions and the genesis of Brexit, and between his home town in the suburbs of Greater London and the rise of the far right. Woven throughout this deeply personal and unflinching memoir of Musa's five years at Eton in the 1990s is a present-day narrative which engages with much wider questions about pressing social and political issues: privilege, the distribution of wealth, the rise of the far right in the UK, systemic racism, the 'boys' club' of government and the power of the few to control the fate of the many. One of Them is both an intimate account and a timely exploration of race and class in modern Britain.

This book interrogates the racist construction of Arya/Aria and Aryanism in an Iranian context, arguing that a racialized interpretation of these concepts has given the Indo-European speaking Persian ethnic group an advantage over Iran's non-Persian nationalities and communities. Based on multidisciplinary research drawing on history, sociology, literature, politics, anthropology and cultural studies, Alireza Asgharzadeh critiques the privileged place of Farsi and the Persian ethnic group in contemporary Iran. The book highlights difference and diversity as major socio-political issues that will determine the future course of social, cultural, and political developments in Iran. Pointing to the increasing inadequacy of Islamic fundamentalism in functioning as a grand narrative, Asgharzadeh explores the racist approach of the current Islamic government to issues of difference and diversity in the country, and shows how these issues are challenging the very existence of the Islamic regime in Iran.

Today, gender and gender identity is at the forefront of discussion as the plight of women around the world and issues of gender equality and human rights have become an international concern for politicians, government agencies, social activists, and the general public. Discourse Analysis as a Tool for Understanding Gender Identity, Representation, and Equality provides a thorough analysis of what language use and linguistic expression can teach us about gender identity in addition to current discussions on topics related to women's rights and gender inequality. Focusing on issues related to women in developing countries, workplace inequalities, and social freedom, this publication is an essential reference source for researchers, graduate-level students, and theorists in the fields of sociology, women's studies, economics, and government.

'Race' and Racism examines the origins and development of racism in North America. It addresses the inception and persistence of the concept of 'race' and discusses the biology of human variance, addressing the fossil record of human evolution, the relationship between creationism and science, population genetics, 'race'-based medicine, and other related issues. The book explores the diverse ways in which people in a variety of cultures have perceived, categorized, and defined one another without reference to any concept of 'race.' It follows the history of American racism through slavery, the perceptions and treatment of Native Americans, Jim Crow laws, attitudes toward Irish and Southern European immigrants, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the civil rights era, and numerous other topics.

What role does "Europe" have in defining, maintaining, constructing, or remedying sex discrimination? This question guides an investigation into the origins, institutions, and policies associated with the European Union and its recent efforts to stem violence against women, sex trafficking, racism and heterosexism.
Exploring the politics of the EU and the integration process through a lens of social (in)equality, "Sexual Equality in an Integrated Europe" keeps us current while offering an innovative means of addressing state sovereignty, transnational power, intergovernmental prowess, transparency, and social change.

In the 1960s, students of Spelman College, a black liberal arts college for women, were drawn into historic civil rights protests occurring across Atlanta, leading to the arrest of some for participating in sit-ins in the local community. A young Howard Zinn (future author of the worldwide best seller A People's History of the United States) was a professor of history at Spelman during this era and served as an adviser to the Atlanta sit-in movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Zinn mentored many of Spelman's students fighting for civil rights at the time, including Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. As a key facilitator of the Spelman student movement, Zinn supported students who challenged and criticized the campus's paternalistic social restrictions, even when this led to conflicts with the Spelman administration. Zinn's involvement with the Atlanta student movement and his closeness to Spelman's leading student and faculty activists gave him an insider's view of that movement and of the political and intellectual world of Spelman, Atlanta University, and the SNCC. Robert Cohen presents a thorough historical overview as well as an entree to Zinn's diary. One of the most extensive records of the political climate on a historically black college in 1960s America, Zinn's diary offers an in-depth view. It is a fascinating historical document of the free speech, academic freedom, and student rights battles that rocked Spelman and led to Zinn's dismissal from the college in 1963 for supporting the student movement.

How does culture articulate, frame, organise and produce stories about social class and class difference? What do these stories tell us about contemporary models of success, failure, struggle and aspiration? How have class-based labels been revived or newly-minted to categorise the insiders and outsiders of the new 'age of austerity'? Drawing on examples from the 1980s to the present day this book investigates the changing landscape of class and reveals how it has become populated by a host of classed figures including Essex Man and Essex Girl, the 'squeezed middle', the 'sharp-elbowed middle class', the 'feral underclass', the 'white working class', the 'undeserving poor', 'selfish baby boomers' and others. Overall, the book argues that social class, although complicated and highly contested, remains a valid and fruitful route into understanding how contemporary British culture articulates social distinction and social difference and the significant costs and investments at stake for all involved.

Anti-Black Racism and the AIDS Epidemic: State Intimacies argues that racial disparities in HIV rates reflect the organization of racialized poverty and structural violence. Challenging the popular perception of HIV, black vulnerability to HIV in the US is shown to be created by the violent intimacy of the state.

Research in Labor Economics 44 takes another in-depth and focussed look at Inequality. This time however it is tied in with well-being of the workforce. Research in Labor Economics volume 44 contains new and innovative research on the causes and consequences of inequality and well-being of the work force.

The latest publication in the award-winning Discussions in Contemporary Culture series, Black Popular Culture gathers together an extraordinary array of critics, scholars, and cultural producers. 30 essays explore and debate current directions in film, television, music, writing, and other cultural forms as created by or with the participation of black artists. 30 illustrations.

Land reform and the possibility of expropriation without compensation are among the most hotly debated topics in South Africa today, met with trepidation and fervour in equal measure. But these broader issues tend to obscure a more immediate reality: a severe housing crisis and a sharp increase in urban land occupations.

In Promised Land, Karl Kemp travels the country documenting the fallout of failing land reform, from the under-siege Philippi Horticultural Area deep in the heart of Cape Town’s ganglands to the burning mango groves of Tzaneen, from Johannesburg’s lawless Deep South to rural KwaZulu-Natal, where chiefs own vast tracts of land on behalf of their subjects. He visits farming communities beset by violent crime, and provides gripping, on-the-ground reporting of recent land invasions, with perspectives from all sides, including land activists, property owners and government officials. Kemp also looks at burning issues surrounding the land debate in South Africa – corruption, farm murders, illegal foreign labour, mechanisation and eviction – and reveals the views of those affected.

Touching on the history of land conflict and conquest in each area, as well as detailing the current situation on the ground, Promised Land provides startling insights into the story of land conflict in South Africa.

A provocative, strategic plan for a humane immigration system from the nation's leading immigration scholars and activists During the past decade, right-wing nativists have stoked popular hostility to the nation's foreign-born population, forcing the immigrant rights movement into a defensive posture. In the Trump years, preoccupied with crisis upon crisis, advocates had few opportunities to consider questions of long-term policy or future strategy. Now is the time for a reset. Immigration Matters offers a new, actionable vision for immigration policy. It brings together key movement leaders and academics to share cutting-edge approaches to the urgent issues facing the immigrant community, along with fresh solutions to vexing questions of so-called "future flows" that have bedeviled policy makers for decades. The book also explores the contributions of immigrants to the nation's identity, its economy, and progressive movements for social change. Immigration Matters delves into a variety of topics including new ways to frame immigration issues, fresh thinking on key aspects of policy, challenges of integration, workers' rights, family reunification, legalization, paths to citizenship, and humane enforcement. The perfect handbook for immigration activists, scholars, policy makers, and anyone who cares about one of the most contentious issues of our age, Immigration Matters makes accessible an immigration policy that both remediates the harm done to immigrant workers and communities under Trump and advances a bold new vision for the future.

Taking the Fight South provides a timely and telling reminder of the vigilance democracy requires if racial justice is to be fully realized. Distinguished historian and civil rights activist Howard Ball has written dozens of books during his career, including the landmark biography of Thurgood Marshall, A Defiant Life, and the critically acclaimed Murder in Mississippi, chronicling the Mississippi Burning killings. In Taking the Fight South, arguably his most personal book, Ball focuses on six years, from 1976 to 1982, when, against the advice of friends and colleagues in New York, he and his Jewish family moved from the Bronx to Starkville, Mississippi, where he received a tenured position in the political science department at Mississippi State University. For Ball, his wife, Carol, and their three young daughters, the move represented a leap of faith, ultimately illustrating their deep commitment toward racial justice. Ball, with breathtaking historical authority, narrates the experience of his family as Jewish outsiders in Mississippi, an unfamiliar and dangerous landscape contending with the aftermath of the civil rights struggle. Signs and natives greeted them with a humiliating and frightening message: "No Jews, Negroes, etc., or dogs welcome." From refereeing football games, coaching soccer, and helping young black girls integrate the segregated Girl Scout troops in Starkville, to life-threatening calls from the KKK in the middle of the night, from his work for the ACLU to his arguments in the press and before a congressional committee for the extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Ball takes the reader to a precarious time and place in the history of the South. He was briefly an observer but quickly became an activist, confronting white racists stubbornly holding on to a Jim Crow white supremacist past and fighting to create a more diverse, equitable, and just society. Ball's story is one of an imitable advocate who didn't just observe as a passive spectator but interrupted injustice. Taking the Fight South will join the list of required books to read about the Black Lives Matter movement and the history of racism in the United States. The book will also appeal to readers interested in Judaism because of its depiction of anti-Semitism directed toward Starkville's Jewish community, struggling to survive in the heart of the deep and very fundamentalist Protestant South.