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Constructing Affirmative Action: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011)
Golland reminds us that “affirmative action” has been not just a public policy filled with ironies, interest convergences, and unintended consequences but also a struggle that at its heart challenges the privileges of white supremacy...this is both a good scholarly and general read, not to mention teaching tool. Few historians have focused so much research on the construction industry and trade unions as one of the key sites of the modern affirmative action battle. With the U.S. Supreme Court possibly poised to overturn affirmative action, we need to see what we may lose with its dismantling. --Philip F. Rubio, author of A History of Affirmative Action, 1619-2000 and There's Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality
Recommended. --CHOICE Reviews Online
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Golland...contends that Richard M. Nixon "was not the ‘father of affirmative action’ or even a ‘civil rights president’ by the standard set by his predecessor in the White House” (p. 4). He also argues that the "federal bureaucracy, which initially worked against the implementation of equal employment opportunity programs...came to be the most effective player for their implementation during the 1960s and 1970s” (ibid.). Finally, the author defines “affirmative action as equal opportunity” (p. 5). In other words, “Affirmative action means carefully identifying areas of inequality, taking a series of positive steps to alleviate that inequality, and following through in the long term” to get results (pp. 5–6)...In sum, Constructing Affirmative Action offers a thoughtful new interpretation, clearly presented and based on judicious research in primary sources. It will become the standard book on the struggle for equal employment opportunity in the construction trades. --Terry Anderson, author of In Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action
David Golland's Constructing Affirmative Action: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity is a wonderful work that examines the impact of local civil rights movements on national leadership and public policy. The book explores how local groups pushed for affirmative action forcing national leaders to react. But this interaction was not always to the benefit of local leaders or the people whom they represented. Golland provides elaborate details of the politics of the Philadelphia Plan and the impact this affirmative action had on the nation. --Clarence Taylor, author of Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union
Buy it now at Amazon.Com.
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