Research Catalog

Title

Collision course : the strange convergence of affirmative action and immigration policy in America / Hugh Davis Graham.

Author

Graham, Hugh Davis

Publication

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2002.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 246 p.; 25 cm.

Summary

"When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 were passed, they were seen as triumphs of liberal reform applauded by the majority of Americans. But today, as Hugh Graham shows in Collision Course, affirmative action is foundering in the great waves of immigration from Asia and Latin America, leading to direct conflict for jobs, housing, education, and government preference programs." "How did two such well-intended laws come to loggerheads? Graham argues that a sea change occurred in American political life in the late 1960s, when a system of split government - one party holding the White House, the other holding Congress - divided authority and enhanced the ability of interest groups to win expanded benefits. In civil rights, this led to a shift from nondiscrimination to the race-conscious remedies of hard affirmative action. In immigration, it led to a surge that by 2000 had brought 35 million immigrants to America, 26 million of them Asian or Latin American and therefore eligible, as "official minorities," for affirmative action preferences. The policies collided when employers, acting under affirmative action plans, hired millions of immigrants while leaving high unemployment among inner-city blacks. Rising competition for affirmative action benefits by Latinos stirred black resentment; participation by Asians, whose average family income and education exceeded that of whites, was widely viewed as unfair. The sharp rise in racially mixed marriages among the children of immigrants challenged the one-drop rule and threatened the concept of official minorities upon which affirmative action depended."--Jacket.

Subject

• USA Government
• Affirmative action programs > United States
• United States > Emigration and immigration > Government policy

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-227) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Civil rights reform in the 1960s -- Immigration reform in the 1960s -- Origins and development of race-conscious affirmative action -- The return of mass immigration -- The strange convergence of affirmative action and immigration policy.

ISBN

0195143183 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2001037476

OCLC

• 47100940
• SCSB-9978634

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library