A01=Anthony S. Chen
American Capitalism
An American Dilemma
Anthony Comstock
Anthony Kennedy
Anti-communism
Arnold Aronson
Arsenal of Democracy
Author_Anthony S. Chen
Brown v. Board of Education
Category=JBFX
Category=JPVH
Category=LNHD
Civil Rights Act
Civil Rights Act of 1960
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Clark Clifford
Class action
Cloture
Conservative coalition
David Garrow
Dean Rusk
Demagogue
Discharge petition
Disparate impact
Double V campaign
Employment
Employment discrimination
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Equal opportunity
Equal Rights Amendment
Executive Order 10925
Executive Order 8802
Fair Deal
Fair Employment Practice Committee
Filibuster
Freedom Riders
Genuine Opposition
Great Society
Gun politics in the United States
Hidden welfare state
Howard University
Irreconcilables
Judicial activism
Judicial deference
Kevin Phillips (political commentator)
Laboratories of democracy
Legislation
Legislator
Liberalism
March on Washington Movement
Massachusetts liberal
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
New Deal coalition
New Federalism
Orval Faubus
Political machine
Politics
Racial segregation
Racism
Reagan Democrat
Silent majority
Southern Democrats
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Supermajority
Superpower
The Origins of the Urban Crisis
Thomas E. Dewey
Veto
Voting
War pension
Wayne Morse
Westbrook Pegler
Whitney Young
Yellow-dog contract
Product details
- ISBN 9780691139531
- Weight: 595g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 15 Jun 2009
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Where did affirmative action in employment come from? The conventional wisdom is that it was instituted during the Johnson and Nixon years through the backroom machinations of federal bureaucrats and judges. The Fifth Freedom presents a new perspective, tracing the roots of the policy to partisan conflicts over fair employment practices (FEP) legislation from the 1940s to the 1970s. Drawing on untapped sources, Anthony Chen chronicles the ironic, forgotten role played by American conservatives in the development of affirmative action. Decades before affirmative action began making headlines, millions of Americans across the country debated whether government could and should regulate job discrimination. On one side was an interfaith and interracial bloc of liberals, who demanded FEP legislation that would establish a centralized system for enforcing equal treatment in the labor market. On the other side was a bloc of business-friendly, small-government conservatives, who felt that it was unwise to "legislate tolerance" and who made common cause with the conservative wing of the Republican party.
Conservatives ultimately prevailed, but their obstruction of FEP legislation unintentionally facilitated the rise of affirmative action, a policy their ideological heirs would find even more abhorrent. Broadly interdisciplinary, The Fifth Freedom sheds new light on the role of parties, elites, and institutions in the policymaking process; the impact of racial politics on electoral realignment; the history of civil rights; the decline of New Deal liberalism; and the rise of the New Right.
Anthony S. Chen is associate professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Michigan.
