John D. Skrentny
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691159966
- eISBN:
- 9781400848492
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691159966.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter introduces the problems of the roles racial differences play in the workplace. It discusses the changes in the way Americans talk about race and what pragmatic and progressive voices say ...
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This chapter introduces the problems of the roles racial differences play in the workplace. It discusses the changes in the way Americans talk about race and what pragmatic and progressive voices say that they want since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Never before has such a wide variety of employers, advocates, activists, and government leaders in American society discussed the benefits of racial diversity and the utility of racial difference in such a broad range of contexts. Thus, the chapter points out the emerging discourse of race as a qualification for employment, and briefly details the many issues as well as the role of established laws on such an issue. It also lays out the conceptual foundations upon which the following chapters will be based on.Less
This chapter introduces the problems of the roles racial differences play in the workplace. It discusses the changes in the way Americans talk about race and what pragmatic and progressive voices say that they want since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Never before has such a wide variety of employers, advocates, activists, and government leaders in American society discussed the benefits of racial diversity and the utility of racial difference in such a broad range of contexts. Thus, the chapter points out the emerging discourse of race as a qualification for employment, and briefly details the many issues as well as the role of established laws on such an issue. It also lays out the conceptual foundations upon which the following chapters will be based on.
John D. Skrentny
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691159966
- eISBN:
- 9781400848492
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691159966.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
What role should racial difference play in the American workplace? As a nation, we rely on civil rights law to address this question, and the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964 seemingly answered ...
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What role should racial difference play in the American workplace? As a nation, we rely on civil rights law to address this question, and the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964 seemingly answered it: race must not be a factor in workplace decisions. This book contends that after decades of mass immigration, many employers, Democratic and Republican political leaders, and advocates have adopted a new strategy to manage race and work. Race is now relevant not only in negative cases of discrimination, but in more positive ways as well. In today's workplace, employers routinely practice “racial realism,” where they view race as real—as a job qualification. Many believe employee racial differences, and sometimes immigrant status, correspond to unique abilities or evoke desirable reactions from clients or citizens. They also see racial diversity as a way to increase workplace dynamism. The problem is that when employers see race as useful for organizational effectiveness, they are often in violation of civil rights law. This book examines this emerging strategy in a wide range of employment situations, including the low-skilled sector, professional and white-collar jobs, and entertainment and media. The book urges us to acknowledge the racial realism already occurring, and lays out a series of reforms that, if enacted, would bring the law and lived experience more in line, yet still remain respectful of the need to protect the civil rights of all workers.Less
What role should racial difference play in the American workplace? As a nation, we rely on civil rights law to address this question, and the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964 seemingly answered it: race must not be a factor in workplace decisions. This book contends that after decades of mass immigration, many employers, Democratic and Republican political leaders, and advocates have adopted a new strategy to manage race and work. Race is now relevant not only in negative cases of discrimination, but in more positive ways as well. In today's workplace, employers routinely practice “racial realism,” where they view race as real—as a job qualification. Many believe employee racial differences, and sometimes immigrant status, correspond to unique abilities or evoke desirable reactions from clients or citizens. They also see racial diversity as a way to increase workplace dynamism. The problem is that when employers see race as useful for organizational effectiveness, they are often in violation of civil rights law. This book examines this emerging strategy in a wide range of employment situations, including the low-skilled sector, professional and white-collar jobs, and entertainment and media. The book urges us to acknowledge the racial realism already occurring, and lays out a series of reforms that, if enacted, would bring the law and lived experience more in line, yet still remain respectful of the need to protect the civil rights of all workers.
Elana D. Buch
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479810734
- eISBN:
- 9781479810147
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479810734.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, American and Canadian Cultural Anthropology
In making care into work, agencies justify their existence in the market as managing the predictable tensions that regularly arise in home care. Home care agencies build upon women’s familial ...
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In making care into work, agencies justify their existence in the market as managing the predictable tensions that regularly arise in home care. Home care agencies build upon women’s familial experience of care while seeking to transform them into workers whose labor conforms to the ethical and temporal norms of American workplaces. Conflicts regularly arise between people’s moral ideologies about care, the economic pressures of capitalist markets, and the laws that govern labor and elder care in the United States. This chapter traces the transformation of moral values into economic value by focusing on the everyday ethics practiced by home care agency training and management staff as they mediate between national moralities, the needs of their agencies, the needs of clients, and their own ethics. Agencies’ different funding sources affect how they imagine and generate their clients’ independence. Publicly funded care policies view older adults as liberal persons in a democratic state in which rights and services are the result of citizenship and need rather than social position. In privately funded care, older adults’ independence was authorized by their privileged position as consumers whose subjective tastes and preferences determined the kinds and quantity of care they received. Their independence was not the result of fair treatment by an equitable state, but rather determined by their ability to wield economic power.Less
In making care into work, agencies justify their existence in the market as managing the predictable tensions that regularly arise in home care. Home care agencies build upon women’s familial experience of care while seeking to transform them into workers whose labor conforms to the ethical and temporal norms of American workplaces. Conflicts regularly arise between people’s moral ideologies about care, the economic pressures of capitalist markets, and the laws that govern labor and elder care in the United States. This chapter traces the transformation of moral values into economic value by focusing on the everyday ethics practiced by home care agency training and management staff as they mediate between national moralities, the needs of their agencies, the needs of clients, and their own ethics. Agencies’ different funding sources affect how they imagine and generate their clients’ independence. Publicly funded care policies view older adults as liberal persons in a democratic state in which rights and services are the result of citizenship and need rather than social position. In privately funded care, older adults’ independence was authorized by their privileged position as consumers whose subjective tastes and preferences determined the kinds and quantity of care they received. Their independence was not the result of fair treatment by an equitable state, but rather determined by their ability to wield economic power.
Nelson Lichtenstein
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037856
- eISBN:
- 9780252095122
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037856.003.0017
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
This chapter presents a portrait of Harvey Swados, whose novels, stories, and spirited reportage in the last decade and a half of his life helped uncover the political and social drama that unfolds ...
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This chapter presents a portrait of Harvey Swados, whose novels, stories, and spirited reportage in the last decade and a half of his life helped uncover the political and social drama that unfolds in the daily routine of every American workplace. Nothing he wrote accomplished this with more power and insight than the series of interconnected short stories called On the Line, which first appeared in the fall of 1957. This humane and sympathetic portrait of the psychological and social brutality inherent in midcentury factory work injected a moral urgency into the understanding of manual labor at a time, early in the postwar era, when most literary and political intellectuals were convinced that all meaning had been drained from the toil still required of so many millions.Less
This chapter presents a portrait of Harvey Swados, whose novels, stories, and spirited reportage in the last decade and a half of his life helped uncover the political and social drama that unfolds in the daily routine of every American workplace. Nothing he wrote accomplished this with more power and insight than the series of interconnected short stories called On the Line, which first appeared in the fall of 1957. This humane and sympathetic portrait of the psychological and social brutality inherent in midcentury factory work injected a moral urgency into the understanding of manual labor at a time, early in the postwar era, when most literary and political intellectuals were convinced that all meaning had been drained from the toil still required of so many millions.
