Human Relations Commissions: Relieving Racial Tensions in the American City

During the 1950s, amid increased attention to the problems facing cities―such as racial disparities in housing, education, and economic conditions; tense community-police relations; and underrepresentation of minority groups―local governments developed an interest in “human relations.” In the wake of the shocking 1965 Watts uprising, a new authority was created: the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission. Today, such commissions exist all over the United States, charged with addressing such tasks as fighting racial discrimination and improving fair housing access.

Brian Calfano and Valerie Martinez-Ebers examine the history and current efforts of human relations commissions in promoting positive intergroup outcomes and enforcing antidiscrimination laws. Drawing on a wide range of theories and methods from political science, social psychology, and public administration, they assess policy approaches, successes, and failures in four cities. The book sheds light on the advantages and disadvantages of different commission types and considers the stresses and expectations placed on commission staff in carrying out difficult agendas in highly charged political contexts. Calfano and Martinez-Ebers suggest that the path to full inclusion is fraught with complications but that human rights commissions provide guidance as to how disparate groups can be brought together to forge a common purpose. The first book to examine these widely occurring yet understudied political bodies, Human Relations Commissions is relevant to a range of urban policy issues of interest to both academics and practitioners.

Valerie Martinez-Ebers is the University Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science
at the University of North Texas. She is a former Vice President of the American Political Science
Association and a former President of the Western Political Science Association. From 2012 to
2016 she served as co-editor of the American Political Science Review, the flagship journal in
political science. She is co-author of
Politicas: Latina Public Officials in Texas (Texas, 2008); Latino Lives in America: Making it Home
(Temple, 2010) and Latinos in the New Millennium: an Almanac of Opinion, Behavior and Policy
Preferences (Cambridge, 2012).

Brian Calfano is assistant professor of political science and journalism at the University of Cincinnatti. He is the coeditor of Muslim Politics in America: Contested Citizenship from 9/11 to the Trump Era (Temple University Press
2018), author of Attaching Identity: Muslim Politics in Post-September 11th America. (Routledge, 2018), and co-author of A Matter of Discretion: The Politics of Catholic Priests in the US and Ireland (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017).