Affirmative action, also known as positive action or positive discrimination, involves sets of policies and practices within a government or organization seeking to benefit particular groups that were historically discriminated against in areas in which such groups are underrepresented, mistreated or suffer from lack of public support—such as education and employment. Historically and internationally, support for affirmative action has sought to achieve goals such as bridging inequalities in employment and pay, increasing access to education, promoting diversity, and redressing wrongs, harms, or hindrances.
Racial color blindness refers to the belief that a person's race or ethnicity should not influence their legal or social treatment in society.
Feminist legal theory, also known as feminist jurisprudence, is based on the belief that the law has been fundamental in women's historical subordination. Feminist jurisprudence the philosophy of law is based on the political, economic, and social inequality of the sexes and feminist legal theory is the encompassment of law and theory connected.The project of feminist legal theory is twofold. First, feminist jurisprudence seeks to explain ways in which the law played a role in women's former subordinate status. Feminist legal theory was directly created to recognize and combat the legal system built primarily by the and for male intentions, often forgetting important components and experiences women and marginalized communities face. The law perpetuates a male valued system at the expense of female values. Through making sure all people have access to participate in legal systems as professionals to combating cases in constitutional and discriminatory law, feminist legal theory is utilized for it all.
White privilege, or white skin privilege, is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. With roots in European colonialism and imperialism, and the Atlantic slave trade, white privilege has developed in circumstances that have broadly sought to protect white racial privileges, various national citizenships, and other rights or special benefits.
Intersectionality is a sociological analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, height, age, weight, species and physical appearance. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing. However, little good-quality quantitative research has been done to support or undermine the practical uses of intersectionality.
Critical race theory (CRT) is an interdisciplinary academic field focused on the relationships between social conceptions of race and ethnicity, social and political laws, and media. CRT also considers racism to be systemic in various laws and rules, and not only based on individuals' prejudices. The word critical in the name is an academic reference to critical thinking, critical theory, and scholarly criticism, rather than criticizing or blaming individuals.
Derrick Albert Bell Jr. was an American lawyer, legal scholar, and civil rights activist. Bell first worked for the U.S. Justice Department, then the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where he supervised over 300 school desegregation cases in Mississippi.
Peggy Ann Pascoe was an American historian. She was the Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History and Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon. She was a member of the University of Oregon History Department from 1996 until her death on July 23, 2010. Prior to her work at UO, Pascoe worked as an assistant professor and then associate professor at the University of Utah, where she taught courses on women’s history, race, and sexuality. Pascoe’s work centers on the history of race, gender, and sexuality, with a particular investment in law and the U.S. West. Together with George Lipsitz, Earl Lewis, George Sanchez, and Dana Takagi, Pascoe edited the influential American Crossroads book series in Ethnic Studies, published by the University of California Press. Pascoe held this position for fifteen years.
In the United States, affirmative action consists of government-mandated, government-approved, and voluntary private programs granting special consideration to groups considered or classified as historically excluded, specifically racial minorities and women. These programs tend to focus on access to education and employment in order to redress the disadvantages associated with past and present discrimination. Another goal of affirmative action policies is to ensure that public institutions, such as universities, hospitals, and police forces, are more representative of the populations they serve.
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is an American civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of using critical race theory as a lens to further explore and examine the Tulsa race massacre. She is a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, where she specializes in race and gender issues.
The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute (VLJI) is a center for the interdisciplinary study and discussion of issues related to philosophy, society, culture, and education. The Institute was established in to create a body of knowledge and discourseto give expression to the wide range of disciplines and opinions in Israel. The contribution of a core of renowned scholars facilitates the implementation of reforms and new approaches in various social spheres.
The Harvard Journal on Legislation is a journal of legal scholarship published by students at Harvard Law School.
Housing discrimination in the United States refers to the historical and current barriers, policies, and biases that prevent equitable access to housing. Housing discrimination became more pronounced after the abolition of slavery in 1865, typically as part of Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation. The federal government didn't begin to take action against these laws until 1917, when the Supreme Court struck down ordinances prohibiting blacks from occupying or owning buildings in majority-white neighborhoods in Buchanan v. Warley. However, the federal government as well as local governments continued to be directly responsible for housing discrimination through redlining and race-restricted covenants until the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
Paula Denice McClain, is a professor of political science, public policy, and African and African American Studies at Duke University and is a widely quoted expert on racism and race relations. Her research focuses primarily on racial minority-group politics and urban politics. She is co-director of Duke's Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences, and director of the American Political Science Association's Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, which is hosted by Duke and funded by the National Science Foundation and Duke.
The Center on Race and Social Problems (CRSP) at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work was designed to address societal problems through research, intervention, and education. It is the first center of its kind to be housed in a school of social work and it is unique in both its multidisciplinary approach and its multiracial focus. The mission of CRSP is to conduct solution-oriented social science research on race, ethnicity, and color and their influence on the quality of life for Americans in the 21st century. CRSP has identified seven major areas of race-related social problems: economic disparities; educational disparities; interracial group relations; mental health practices and outcomes; youth, families, and the elderly; criminal justice; and health.
Transgender inequality is the unequal protection received by transgender people in work, school, and society in general. Transgender people regularly face transphobic harassment. Ultimately, one of the largest reasons that transgender people face inequality is due to a lack of public understanding of transgender people.
The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907-1981 is a 1993 nonfiction book by Jeffrey Mirel, published by the University of Michigan Press. It discusses the rise and decline of Detroit Public Schools (DPS) in the 20th century, with the book's discussion focusing on the 1920s, the zenith of DPS, through the 1980s. Mirel argued that the Great Depression, various trends related to racial tensions stemming from the Civil Rights Movement, the development of new suburbia, and other factors were primarily responsible for the decline of DPS; the conflicts between blacks and whites and between labor and management eroded the consensus reached during the Progressive Era that schools should receive ample financing. They were forces that a school superintendent or a school board would not be able to overcome.
Affirmative action refers to activities or policies that seek to help groups that are often affected by discrimination obtain equal access to opportunities, particularly in areas such as employment and education. In the United States, in the early 2000s, the use of race, gender, and other factors in college and university admissions decisions came under attack.
Deborah N. Archer is an American civil rights lawyer and law professor. She is the Jacob K. Javits Professor at New York University and professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law. She also directs the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law and the Civil Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law. In January 2021, she was elected president of the American Civil Liberties Union, becoming the first African American to hold the position in the organization’s history.
In critical race theory, the black–white binary is a paradigm through which racial history is presented as a linear story between White and Black Americans. This binary has largely defined how civil rights legislation is approached in the United States, as African Americans led most of the major racial justice movements that informed civil rights era reformation. The paradigm conceptualizes Black and White people as the two predominant racial groups, viewing all racism accordant to anti-blackness, and the Black–White relation as central to racial analysis. According to critical race scholars, the binary acts to govern racial classifications and describe how race is understood and approached politically and socially throughout American history. The black-white binary is a product of white socialization and reduces race relations to an oppressor/oppressed dichotomy.
