Racism and Justice: The Case for Affirmative Action - Hardcover

Ezorsky, Gertrude

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801426227 ISBN 13: 9780801426223

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1991

Synopsis

Affirmative action: does it really counteract racism? Is it morally justifiable? In her timely and tough-minded book, Gertrude Ezorsky addresses these central issues in the ongoing controversy surrounding affirmative action, and comes up with some convincing answers.

Ezorsky begins by examining the effectiveness of affirmative action as a remedy for institutional racism in the workplace. She analyzes the ways in which common practices-selection of employees based on personal connections, qualification, and seniority standards-perpetuate the injurious effect of past racial discrimination, and she assesses the rationale for such affirmative action measures as objective job-related testing, numerical goals, and preferential treatment for basically qualified blacks. To illuminate the social reality in which affirmative action takes place, she draws on recent work by social scientists and legal scholars.

Turning to the moral issues, Ezorsky posits two basic justifications for affirmative action: first, looking backward-to provide deserved compensation for past racial injustice that was sanctioned, practiced, and encouraged by our government; second, looking forward-to promote racial desegregation in the American workplace. Unlike some supporters of affirmative action, she does not deny that preferential treatment may place an unfair burden on white males. Indeed, she suggests specific practical measures for spreading that burden more equitably.

Clear-headed, well-reasoned, and persuasive, this book will be read eagerly by everyone from students to legislators, by anyone concerned with racial justice in America.

About this title

About the Author

Gertrude Ezorsky is Professor Emerita, City University of New York, Brooklyn College and the Graduate School. She is the author of Freedom in the Workplace, also from Cornell, and the editor of Philosophical Perspectives on Punishment and Moral Rights in the Workplace.

From Publishers Weekly

Ezorsky ( Moral Rights in the Workplace ) focuses in this extended essay on affirmative action as a means to ending discrimination against African-Americans, arguing that the unique history of black Americans makes them a perfect test case of the policy's efficacy. She writes that "from the post-Reconstruction period to the present . . . racist practices have continued to transmit and reinforce the consequences of slavery," relegating most blacks to jobs that would, 150 years ago, have been reserved for slaves. Moreover, she points out, race-neutral policies such as seniority have the same effect as overtly racist exclusion. Ezorsky's discussion of affirmative action programs is quietly methodical and admirably clear-headed; her prose, unfortunately, is often as dry as it is deliberate. When she turns her attention to the opposition, however, she begins to warm to the task. Although her argument is buttressed by key documents from recent studies, programs and legal cases, one wishes she had gone into greater detail on the nuts-and-bolts effects of the programs. Even so, the book is a useful starting point for any discussion of the morality of affirmative action.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0801426227
• ISBN 13: 9780801426223
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 5
• Number of pages: 136