Policy Feedback and the Racialization of Affirmative Action, 1961-1980

ABSTRACT

Since the 1960s, U.S. lawmakers have used affirmative action policies to promote equal opportunity. Although these policies have played an important role in redressing historical discrimination by helping women, racial and ethnic minorities, citizens with disabilities, and veterans to make progress in employment and education, their effects for racial equity in higher educational access have come to dominate popular perceptions of affirmative action and drive the often contentious political discourse surrounding it. How did popular understandings of affirmative action policy become so racialized, and what are the implications of this racialization for its capacity to redress past wrongs? This paper examines the early political development of affirmative action policy in the U.S. from its emergence in 1961 through 1980. Historical analysis suggests that the contentious race-centered politics of affirmative action that emerged after the landmark Regents v. Bakke case is a matter of policy feedback effects.

KEYWORDS:

• Affirmative action
• public policy
• policy feedback
• history and politics
• race
• education

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Kristin Goss for comments on a previous draft of this manuscript, as well as participants in the “Policy Change: Revisiting the Past, Analyzing Contemporary Processes and Stimulating Inter-temporal Comparisons” panel at the 2018 IPSA World Congress of Political Science in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I also thank Katherine Gan for wonderful research assistance.

Notes

1. The United States is not the only nation to use public policy to correct for historical discrimination against marginalized groups. India pioneered affirmative action programming in the late 1940s, and this was followed by the implementation of additional affirmative action initiatives in places like the United States, Malaysia, Fiji, South Africa, South America, and Northern Ireland (Crichlow & Gomez, 2015). Affirmative action policies emerged steadily beginning in the 1960s, with the United States introducing policies in 1961, Malaysia in 1970, Fiji in 1987, and South Africa in 1998 (Crichlow & Gomez, 2015, p. 4).

2. Nixon’s use of the term also included echoes of the generic use employed by his two most recent predecessors, signaling a commitment to intentional efforts to pursue objectives related to labor and law enforcement (Nixon, 1969a, 1972, 1974).