Racial Preference and Racial Justice: The New Affirmative Action Controversy » (New Edition)

In the early 1960s, civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., aimed at achieving a completely color-blind society in which people would be judged solely by the content of their character. Since then, however, governmental concern over civil rights has shifted from strict neutrality to the preferential hiring and promoting of certain groups in the workplace, and the preferential admission of certain minorities to educational institutions.

Library Journal

Affirmative action (AA) as designated here involves a wide variety of government-supported policies which extend preferential consideration (especially in employment) to members of racial groups officially designated as disadvantaged minorities. With the advent of the Rehnquist Supreme Court, which has pared back a number of previously instituted AA programs, the AA issue has again come to the forefront of American consciousness. In this book, Nieli has pulled together a large amount of original source material on the historical, philosophical, and legal background of AA, including the commentary of the various Supreme Court justices on the issue. While this volume is intended primarily for academic collections, to the extent that questions raised by AA touch everyone's lives, it might be an appropriate acquisition for public libraries wishing to develop a collection on public policy concerns.-- Gene R. Laczniak, Marquette Univ., Milwaukee