Word: civilizations
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Justice Department under President Bush brought suit against the Piscataway Board of Education for having violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race-conscious employment decisions. Citing Title VII, a Federal Appeals Court ruled that Piscataway's practices were illegal insofar as they did not remedy any actual discrimination that Williams had suffered. The decision was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court...
Interpreted literally, Title VII prevents firms from considering race as a factor in hiring. Created to protect minorities from discrimination, this provision of the Civil Rights Act has therefore not been invoked against affirmative action programs that favor minorities. Affirmative action supporters feared that with political tides in the United States shifting to the right, the Taxman case would give the court the opportunity to codify this shift--eradicating the widespread use of affirmative action policies...
Those who would defend the Taxman case in theory but who sought a settlement for political purposes can claim but a modest victory. By burying Taxman, affirmative action supporters only succeeded in postponing their day of reckoning before the high court. Despite their deep pockets, civil rights groups will eventually have to engage their opponents in debate instead of paying them off with a handsome settlement...
...action implored the justices to confine their judgment to the case at hand. In essence, trying to cut their losses, many liberals urged the court to strike down affirmative action as it affected Taxman and Williams but to withhold judgment on racial preferences as a whole. As time passed, civil rights groups grew increasingly uneasy. In November, a coalition of such groups agreed to finance a settlement, effectively making the case and its constitutional dilemmas disappear for the time being...
...These civil rights groups were not alone in their reluctance to defend affirmative action as practiced in Piscataway. The Clinton Administration (leery of the abolition of a system the President had pledged "to mend, not end") had expressed hope that the consideration of the Taxman case would not include a decision on the "extraordinarily broad issue" of affirmative action. Likewise, pundits who usually enthusiastically support affirmative action shied away from this case. New York Times Columnist Bob Herbert labeled Piscataway v. Taxman "the wrong case." Herbert argued that the case was unrepresentative of affirmative action, contending that Williams was better...