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The Great Depression hit Americans hard, but none harder than African Americans and the working poor. To Ask for an Equal Chance explores black experiences during this period and the intertwined challenges posed by race and class. "Last hired, first fired," black workers lost their jobs at twice the rate of whites, and faced greater obstacles in their search for economic security. Black workers, who were generally urban newcomers, impoverished and lacking industrial skills, were already at a disadvantage. These difficulties were intensified by an overt, and in the South legally entrenched, system of racial segregation and discrimination. New federal programs offered hope as they redefined government's responsibility for its citizens, but local implementation often proved racially discriminatory. As Cheryl Lynn Greenberg makes clear, African Americans were not passive victims of economic catastrophe or white racism; they responded to such challenges in a variety of political, social, and communal ways. The book explores both the external realities facing African Americans and individual and communal responses to them. While experiences varied depending on many factors including class, location, gender and community size, there are also unifying and overarching realities that applied universally. To Ask for an Equal Chance straddles the particular, with examinations of specific communities and experiences, and the general, with explorations of the broader effects of racism, discrimination, family, class, and political organizing.
HOW TO MAKE OPPORTUNITY EQUAL “Paul Gomberg makes a powerful and provocative case that real equality of opportunity can only be achieved by overturning the social division of labor that unfairly handicaps not just blacks but the working class in general.” —Charles W. Mills, University of Illinois at Chicago “An important and original contribution to contemporary debates about justice in political philosophy; an accessible introduction to those debates for students and the lay reader; and a powerful and important challenge to policymakers, educators and employers, to think hard about their responsibilities for enabling people to lead flourishing lives.” —Harry Brighouse, University of Wisconsin-Madison “In this impressive book, Paul Gomberg argues ardently, with great optimism, and with philosophical and sociological sophistication, for a radical new theory of egalitarian justice.” —David Copp, University of Florida Distributive injustices such as low pay, inferior healthcare and housing, as well as diminished opportunities in school continue to blight the lives of millions of the urban poor in America and beyond. This book announces a new theory of justice. Paul Gomberg: focuses on how race and class structure unequal life prospects shows how human society can be organized in a way that does not socialize children for lives of routine labor maintains that true equality of opportunity comes only when all labor, both routine and complex, is shared proposes a new paradigm for the theory of justice. While Rawls, Sen, Nozick, and Walzer conceive justice as addressing how various goods are fairly obtained or distributed, Gomberg argues that justice in distribution must advance contributive opportunities and duties. On Gomberg’s contributive theory of justice, each person contributes to society not for individual material gain, but from a sense of what is required in order to build just relations with others. Passionate and radical, but rigorously argued, this book makes a vital and original contribution to philosophy and social thought.
Equal Opportunity Theory is a clear and comprehensive examination of the idea of self-determination: both the right to self-determination as well as its expression in our society. Author Dennis E. Mithaug examines society's collective responsibility for assuring fair prospects of self-determination for all people. This inclusive volume also describes how social policies derived from the theory of equal opportunity actually impact those with the least likely prospects for self-determination throughout their lives - the poor, the disabled, and people of color.
Bottlenecks introduces a powerful new way of understanding equal opportunity. Rather than literal equalization, Joseph Fishkin argues that Americans ought to aim to broaden the range of opportunities open to people, at every stage in life, to pursue different paths. This approach has significant implications for public policy and antidiscrimination law.
Equal opportunity in the workplace is thought to be the direct legacy of the civil rights and feminist movements and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, as Frank Dobbin demonstrates, corporate personnel experts--not Congress or the courts--were the ones who determined what equal opportunity meant in practice, designing changes in how employers hire, promote, and fire workers, and ultimately defining what discrimination is, and is not, in the American imagination. Dobbin shows how Congress and the courts merely endorsed programs devised by corporate personnel. He traces how the first measures were adopted by military contractors worried that the Kennedy administration would cancel their contracts if they didn't take "affirmative action" to end discrimination. These measures built on existing personnel programs, many designed to prevent bias against unionists. Dobbin follows the changes in the law as personnel experts invented one wave after another of equal opportunity programs. He examines how corporate personnel formalized hiring and promotion practices in the 1970s to eradicate bias by managers; how in the 1980s they answered Ronald Reagan's threat to end affirmative action by recasting their efforts as diversity-management programs; and how the growing presence of women in the newly named human resources profession has contributed to a focus on sexual harassment and work/life issues. Inventing Equal Opportunity reveals how the personnel profession devised--and ultimately transformed--our understanding of discrimination.
This book offers original and innovative contributions to the debate about equality of opportunity. The first part sets out a theory of equality of opportunity that presents equal opportunities as a normative device for the regulation of competition for scarce resources. The second part shifts the focus to the consideration of the practical application by courts or legislatures or public policy makers of policies for addressing racial, class or gender injustices. The author examines standardized tests, affirmative action, workfare, universal health-care, comparable worth, and the economic consequences of divorce.
Against Equality of Opportunity deals with the ways in which opportunities - education, jobs and other things which affect how people get on in life - are distributed. Take jobs: should the best person always get the job? Or should everyone be given an equal 'life chance'? Or can we somehow combine these two ideas, saying that the best person should always get the job, but that everyone should have an equal chance to become the best? These seem to be the standard views, but this book argues that they are all flawed. We need to understand meritocracy for what it is - a technical rather than a moral ideal; and we need to accept that equality just isn't something we should be striving for at all in this area. We also need to rethink our approach to the related issue of discrimination. We tend to assume discrimination is wrong because it violates either meritocracy or equality, when in fact it is wrong for quite different reasons. In all these areas, then, Cavanagh aims to loosen the grip of established ways of thinking, in order that other ideas might find room to breathe. This is particularly important in the case of meritocracy, which after the recent conversion of the centre-left now dominates the debate more than ever. This book will be of interest to students and teachers of political philosophy, but ultimately it is aimed at anyone who cares about the fundamental values that lie behind the way society is organized. Though the argument is rigorous, it does not require a professional philosophical training to follow it.
"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, withredistributive 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
Equal Opportunity Theory is a clear and comprehensive examination of the idea of self determination: both the right to self-determination as well as its expression in our society. Author Dennis E. Mithaug examines society′s collective responsibility for assuring fair prospects of self-determination for all people. This inclusive volume also describes how social policies derived from the theory of equal opportunity actually impact those with the least likely prospects for self-determination throughout their lives--the poor, the disabled, and people of color. Author Dennis E. Mithaug first presents the logical, philosophical, and psychological basis for equal opportunity theory and then presents its social and judicial background. From this foundation he shows how the optimal prospects principle derived from the theory decreases the discrepancy between the right and the experience of self-determination for children and adults with significant physical, mental, social, and economic disadvantages. Although the main thrust is theoretical, evidence in support of the theory is based upon a combination of empirical, historical, and logical sources. Addressing one of the hottest current topics in American society and public policy today, Equal Opportunity Theory′s timeliness will make it of great interest to students and professionals in the fields of sociology, psychology, and political science. "In Equal Opportunity Theory, Dennis E. Mithaug writes about the discrepancy between the right to self-determination and the expression of that right, a problem that is salient to most Americans with disabilities and others who are less well situated in our society. This discrepancy manifests itself in what may be the most ′handicapping′ aspect of having a disability, being poor, or being a member of a minority group that experiences frequent discrimination--the lack of control over one′s life. Equal Opportunity Theory provides a thoughtful, interdisciplinary treatment of the complex issues related to this problem. The book provides an important differentiation of the impact of individual capacity and opportunity theory as a means to resolve the discrepancy between the right to and experience of self-determination for individuals whose personal, social, and economic circumstances are beyond their control. It also provides a valuable contribution to the debate concerning how best to empower and enable all individuals to live self-determined lives." --Michael L. Wehmeyer, The Arc National Headquarters