He concludes with a look at the University of Michigan cases of 2003, the current status of the policy, and its impact. By the early 1980s many citizens were becoming alarmed by affirmative action, and that feeling was exemplified by the Reagan administration's backlash, which resulted in the demise and revision of affirmative action during the Clinton years.

He describes President Nixon's expansion of affirmative action with the Philadelphia Plan-which the Supreme Court upheld-along with President Carter's introduction of 'set asides' for minority businesses and the Bakke ruling which allowed the use of race as one factor in college admissions. He investigates President Kennedy's historic 1961 executive order that introduced the term 'affirmative action' during the early years of the civil rights movement and he examines President Johnson's attempts to gain equal opportunities for African Americans. Philip Randolph's threatened March on Washington in July 1941-and the desegregation of the armed forces after World War II. Board of Education this is the only book available that gives readers a balanced, non-polemical, and lucid account of this highly contentious issue.īeginning with the roots of affirmative action, Anderson describes African-American demands for employment in the defense industry-spearheaded by A. Published on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Mod The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative ActionĪffirmative action strikes at the heart of deeply held beliefs about employment and education, about fairness, and about the troubled history of race relations in America.

When affirmative action was white book