A History of Affirmative Action Protests in the United States, 1965-1985

FAIN: FB-52123-05

Dennis Arthur Deslippe
Unaffiliated Independent Scholar (Lancaster, PA 17603-3003)

This book project explains why "reverse discrimination" protests by white men in the 1965-85 period are central to our understanding the shape and character of affirmative action in recent U.S. history. Opposition to affirmative action transformed federal equal employment opportunity policies, local and national politics, and gender and race relations in the workplace and insitutions of higher education across the country. In this project I demonstrate that opponents did not simply reject new programs for advancing the economic status of minority men and women of all races: they harnessed the rhetoric of "rights talk" to their own ends, making far-reaching claims about equality, justice, and citizenship in the post-civil rights era.