Right Turn: William Bradford Reynolds, the Reagan Administration, and Black Civil Rights

Pirmais vāks
Transaction Publishers, 1996. gada 1. janv. - 499 lappuses
In the spirit of the time, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 called for nondiscrimination for American citizens, seeking equality without regard for race, color, or creed. After the mid-1960s, to make amends for wrongs of the past, some people called for benign discrimination to give blacks a special boost. In business and government this could be accomplished through racial preferences or quotas; in public education, by considering race when assigning students to schools. By 1980 this course reached a crossroads. Raymond Wolters maintains that Ronald Reagan and William Bradford Reynolds made the "right turn" when they questioned and limited the use of racial considerations in drawing electoral boundaries. He also documents the Reagan administration's considerable success in reinforcing within the country, and reviving within the judiciary, the conviction that every person black or white should be considered an individual with unique talents and inalienable rights. This book begins with a biographical chapter on William Bradford Reynolds, the Assistant Attorney General who was the principal architect of Reagan's civil rights policies. It then analyzes three main civil rights issues: voting rights, affirmative action, and school desegregation. Wolters describes specific cases: at-large elections and minority vote dilutions; congressional districting in New Orleans; legislative districting in North Carolina; the debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1964; social science critiques of affirmative action; the question of quotas; and school desegregation and forced busing. Because Ronald Reagan and William Bradford Reynolds were men of the right, and because most journalists and historians are on the left, Wolters feels the "people of words" have dealt harshly with the Reagan administration. In writing this book, he hopes to correct the record on a subject that has been badly represented. Wolters points out that, beginning in the 1980s and continuing in the 1990s, the Supreme Court endorsed the legal arguments that Reagan's lawyers developed in the fields of voting rights, affirmative action, and school desegregation. In "Right Turn," Wolters responds to those who claimed that Reagan and Reynolds were racists who wanted to turn back the clock on civil rights, and he describes civil rights cases and controversies in a way that is comprehensible to general readers as well as to lawyers and historians.

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Saturs

Preclearance
25
AtLarge Elections Minority Vote Dilution and The Results Test
39
The Debate Over the Revised Section 2
53
Six Cases Mississippi New York City Selma Burke County Montgomery Greene County
69
Congressional Districting in New Orleans
95
Legislative Districting in North Carolina
113
Conclusion to Part I
133
Affirmative Action
141
Endgame
269
Conclusion to Part II
289
School Desegregation
303
Introduction to Part III
305
From Brown to Busing
307
Coercion or Choice The Forked Road to School Desegregation
335
Breaking Away
363
Shaping a New Policy
381

Introduction to Part II
143
The Civil Rights Act 1964
145
The Social Science Critique of Affirmative Action
169
Charting a New Course The Case of the New Orleans Police Department
205
False Dawn
229
The Nadir
245
Gold Plated Desegregation
405
Light at the End of the Tunnel?
431
Conclusion to Part III
459
The Bob Jones Case
465
Index
487
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