Affirmative Action

Question 1

the development of affirmative action

Answer 1

• 1965 President Johnson made an important speech to Howard University concerning the future of African America within the US
• same month as the Voting Rights Act
• Civil Rights Act 1964 and Voting Rights Act 1965 had effectively ended legalised discrimination
• but for many African Americans massive disparities in income and social position remained, proving that ending segregation was not enough
• Johnson’s speech: “it is not enough to just open the gates of opportunity”
• “We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result”

Question 2

what problems highlighted the need to immediately address the underlying causes of racial inequality in the US

Answer 2

• the rioting in Watts, a predominantly African American Ghetto of Los Angeles, that took place after Johnson’s speech
• rioting flared up in the summer in many cities across America, including Detroit in 1967 and Washington DC after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jnr in 1968

Question 3

what did Johnson do in 1967?

Answer 3

• issued executive order 11365, creating the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder and empowering it to investigate the causes of the riots

Question 4

what did the Kerner Report in 1968 say?

Answer 4

• “Our nation is moving towards two societies, one black and one white - separate and unequal […] Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American”

Question 5

Reasons for Racial Inequality:

Population movement and housing discrimination or “white flight”

Answer 5

• post war housing shortages - resulted from the influx of rural black and Latino workers combined with massive numbers of white military veterans returning home from war.
• All this aggravate socio-economic inequalities between races
• this precipitated the white flight from urban downtown areas to outlying suburbs
• this migration also took place when mass ownership of the car was made possible allowing people to commute into the city
• additionally African Americans weren’t allowed to purchase houses in the suburbs
• the net effect was to reinforce the creation of African American ghettos and to make the suburbs almost exclusively white

Question 6

Reasons for Racial Inequality:

Poor education, poverty and a lack of economic opportunity

Answer 6

• areas that had a majority white population paid more tax and had better schools, whilst those in areas dominated by ethnic minorities were worse due to the low tax income available
• problem enhanced by the occurrence of “white flight”
• additionally the decline of urban manufacturing jobs during the 60s/70s/80s led to a decline in the rate of employment in the inner cities, which further reduced the tax income of the area
• thus, many minority groups and especially African Americans, were trapped in ghettos that had poor school and offered little in the way of future employment for young people, which led to a descent into poverty and crime

Question 7

Reasons for Racial Inequality:

Family breakdown, crime and drug use

Answer 7

• because of poverty, lack of employment and continued discrimination, the largely African American population of many inner city areas was left with few opportunities to improve their lives
• the Kerner commission predicted that if the economic decline of the inner cities was allowed to continue then the poor quality of life in those areas would lead to increased tensions within families, crime born of desperation and hopelessness born of increasing levels of drug use
• predicting the impact of the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s

Question 8

Identifying Solutions:

Improve urban housing and combat housing discrimination

Answer 8

• housing discrimination had led to the accelerated ghettoisation of many US cities
• Kerner commission report argued for legislation to prevent such discrimination
• this would allow the minority middle class to settle anywhere they wished and lead to integration in the suburbs
• the commission proposed that the federal government should build six million new homes in urban areas across America