Thursday, February 21, 2013

Felker-Kantor on "Struggles for Equal Employment Opportunity in Multiracial Los Angeles, 1964-1982"

The latest issue of the Pacific Historical Review includes an article that may be of interest: Max Felker-Kantor, "'A Pledge Is Not Self-Enforcing': Struggles for Equal Employment Opportunity in Multiracial Los Angeles, 1964–1982."Here's the abstract:
This article explores African American and Mexican American struggles for equal employment in Los Angeles after 1965. It argues that activists and workers used the mechanisms set up by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to attack the barriers that restricted blacks and Mexican Americans to poor job prospects. It shows that implementation of fair employment law was part of a dialectic between policymakers and regulatory officials, on one hand, and grass-roots individuals and civil rights organizations, on the other. The bureaucratic mechanisms created by Title VII shaped who would benefit from the implementation of the law. Moreover, blacks and Mexican Americans mixed ethnic power and civil rights frameworks to make the bureaucratic system more capacious and race-conscious, which challenged the intentions of the original legislation. 
Subscribers may access the full article here. (Hat tip: H-Law)