Word: equalization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Sharon Taxman, who is white, and Debra Williams, who is black, both worked in the business department of a Piscataway, N.J., high school. Fiscal hardship required the school to trim the business department by one position. Although Taxman and Williams had equal seniority, the school decided to retain Williams, arguing that she lent racial diversity to the faculty...
...corollary to the idea that race can override deficiencies is that if all other things are equal, the minority candidate should be chosen. This eminently defensible case, in which race is a mere tiebreaker and not a be-all-and-end-all that wakes conservatives in a cold sweat, is the Taxman case. Seniority being equal, the Piscataway School Board chose the woman who lent diversity in addition to business savvy...
...other words, Habermas is all for maintaining the institutions of representative government-including the politicians. What concerns him is their source of legitimacy in society. Habermas believes that our institutions should derive their authority from a vibrant public sphere in which individuals communicate with one another as equals, putting their private interests aside and allowing the best arguments to hold sway. Anything less--for example, a "public sphere" in which might makes right, or where certain voices aren't listened to--would seem to violate the cherished liberal, democratic principle that human beings are free and equal...
...legislature got involved because the local school board feared that targeting gay clubs could provoke a lawsuit. Indeed, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund has used legal threats to shelter gay-straight alliances at more than 20 schools nationally. Ironically, the fund's primary weapon is the federal Equal Access Act, a 1984 law designed to safeguard religious groups. The act says schools must treat clubs equally, regardless of beliefs. Lambda has found no student willing to bring a suit challenging Utah's statewide ban. Nevertheless, the East High group still meets each Thursday, skirting the ban by paying...
...have a hard time believing that [the candidates chosen] were so far and beyond all of the others," she said. "All other things being equal, you should choose people you know represent people who do not already have representation...