Since the Civil Rights Act was legislated, the United States has gone through a dramatic change in regards to race and racism in our society. This essence of change includes the ideas of racial and ethnic composition in the United States today, and in regards to this review, the shift in employer behavior. Today, employers seek a more diverse workforce, with hopes of achieving organizational goals because of it. John Skrentny’s After Civil Rights: Racial Realism in the New American Workplace, exemplifies how the workplace today contradicts the anticipations of the Civil Rights Act, when it was passed in 1964. Skrentny divides his book into several chapters including topics from the public sector, to media and entertainment, and shows his audience that there is a new presence of racial realism taking place in the workplace today, while justifying this with social scientific research. Skrentny’s framework allows his audience to understand that his goal is to not only rethink, but to bring up to date the policies of Title VII, and to get them to interpret how well our laws align with our behavior and practices.
Skrentny argues that the system of offering minorities employment today for the benefit of the employer’s business, not only violates equal opportunity laws, but it also violates the guarantee of equal treatment stated in the Civil Rights Act. Many workers are not hired based on relevant conditions or requirements, but by “racial realism,” which is the process of “using membership in a racial group as a qualification for employment”, in order for a workplace to promote diversity and “fairness” (Skrentny 3). According to Skrentny, there are two types of racial realism in the workforce, which are hiring minorities to increase the company’s market share, and getting favorable responses from the company’s audience due to the deployment of an employee’s race.
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Skrentny divides his book into chapters that express how racial realism is practiced throughout different areas of the workforce. This theory of racial realism has many different forms and approaches, from health care hiring or promoting individuals based off the belief that matching patients and physicians according to their races promotes better health outcomes, to advertising companies hiring diverse models and actors with hopes to sell products to a wider audience. Skrentny explains that racial realism is widespread across the workforce, even though there is mixed evidence that proves this is occurring, and that there is little authorization for this practice across the areas he studies including medicine, journalism, teaching, advertising, entertainment, and food processing.
In the final chapter of his book, Skrentny expresses that some forms of racial matching should be permitted, as long as minorities gain the right to remove themselves from that particular position within a few years. He mentions that the unequal outcomes of racial realism are acceptable as long as it is by the choice of the individual and not brought upon them by their employers. Furthermore, he approves a range of policies that would influence employers to keep in mind the effect of their actions on the economic development of minority communities as well as “give domestic workers a closer look” (Skrentny 256).
Skrentny does an excellent job of getting his readers to an understanding of how race still plays a factor in employment practices of our workforce today, and how law and public policy should play a role from here on out. Although his argument is solid, after reading this book I am left with the question of can law and public policy truly play a role in eliminating or diminishing racial realism? I believe that Skrentny did a successful job of breaking down racial realism in different areas of the workforce, especially in his discussion of changing shape and character in the packinghouse industry, where he explains that brown collar jobs are created when employers engage in careful hiring decisions to shed workers. I also believe that a strength of this work is that when readers conclude this book, they are left with the thought of how society can align law and policy with behavior and practices in regards to the workforce, due to Skrentny’s demonstrations on how color blindness is not a strategy for American employers. However, I believe that what Skrentny failed to demonstrate is how labor unions have little no to impact in America on shaping employment policies. Although Skrentny’s policies of reform and change hope to mend racial realism in the workforce, he lacks addressing worker agency. With that being said it, these policies do not necessarily end racial realism. However, Skrentny should be commended for documenting this manner in which employees are employed.
Skrentny notes that his study of racial realism does not account for the entire workforce, which can be a limitation to this study. It would have been nice to see his analysis on all areas of the workforce, because I believe that having this information would help to identify solutions in regards to law and policy on how to successfully end it. Including all parts of the workforce could help readers to identify acts of racial realism that they may have thought were normal, and promote the want to end this practice that employers partake in. However, although this study does not account for the entire workforce, Skrentny also identifies that his study is sizeable. I found that Skrentny succeeded in analyzing his argument of racial realism, by studying the different areas of the workforce which include medicine, journalism, teaching, advertising, entertainment, and food processing. By diving into each part of the workforce, although it is not the complete workforce, he demonstrates specifically what is happening in employment processes today, and how it challenges ideas of not only the Civil Rights Act, but affirmative action as well.
After the conclusion of reading this book, After Civil Rights will spark conversations on labor economics, regarding how different companies choose to hire their employees. This study is important because this practice of racial realism is often under looked or unnoticed, and because of this, employers continue to partake in it, for their own personal benefits. It is also important, because this practice can account for ongoing discrimination between employers and minorities, and it is becoming not only socially inefficient, but economically inefficient as well. This book can benefit individuals who feel they have been denied from a job due to their race, and give them the tools to uncovering methods to stop, or further change, this practice in regards to laws and policies. With these tools, one can gain an understanding of how racial realism contrasts with previous views that race in the workplace should counter acts of discrimination in the past, and begin the path to making others know that this process is inconsistent with laws and judicial decisions, and not counter to equal opportunity.
Works Cited
Skrentny, John David. After Civil Rights: Racial Realism in the New American Workplace. Princeton University Press, 2014.
Keith Haring Was An American Artist
Keith Haring was an American artist who was born in the small town of Kutztown, Pennsylvania in 1958. He grew up with three younger sisters, Kay, Karen, and Kristen. At a very young age, Keith became interested in art and created drawings with his dad, an engineer and amateur cartoonist. Later in his life during the late 70s he studied commercial art, but eventually lost interest and decided to leave after he read Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit, which inspired Keith to concentrate on his own art.
After deciding not to study commercial art, Keith got a maintenance job at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and was able to study art from Jean Dubuffet, Pollock, and Mark Tobey. His most important influence at the time was the work of Pierre Alechinsky. Alechinsky’s work gave Keith the confidence to create larger paintings of calligraphic images, and the possibility of including the public with his art. In 1978 he moved to New York and attended the School of Visual Arts. He studied painting, semiotics (the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications as well as linguistic and non-linguistic sign systems), and the possibilities of video and performance art.
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Keith’s art first gained public attention in the subways where he created white chalk drawings on unused, black advertisement boards in the stations. His bold lines, vivid colors, and active figures carried strong messages of life and unity, and “The Radiant Baby” became his symbol. Between 1982 and 1989 he created more than 50 public works in countless cities around the world. One of his early works depicts two figures holding a heart above their heads, interpreted as a bold homosexual love and significant cultural statement. One of his murals created in 1986, “Crack is Wack,” can be seen from New York’s FDR Drive, and a piece called “Rebel with Many Causes” criticized the avoidance of social issues, such as AIDS. Keith also became well acquainted with Andy Warhol, and made Warhol the theme of several works.
Keith went to Australia in 1984 and painted wall murals in Melbourne and Sydney, and got commissioned to paint murals for the National Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. He also visited and painted in Rio de Janeiro, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and Manhattan. In 1985, he became politically active and created a “Free South America” poster, and in 1986, he had his first solo museum exhibition in Amsterdam, where he painted a mural at that museum. Also in 1986, Keith was asked to paint a mural on the Berlin Wall. His mural stretched 300 meters long and showed red and black figures on a yellow background, representing the colors of the German flag and symbolizing the hope of unity for West and East Germany.
Keith’s Pop Shop opened in April 1986 in Soho, and made his work accessible to purchase at reasonable prices. When people asked him about the commercialism of his work, he said: “I could earn more money if I just painted a few things and jacked up the price. My shop is an extension of what I was doing in the subway stations, breaking down the barriers between high and low art.” Around this same time, Keith’s work started to reflect more socio-political themes, like AIDS awareness and the cocaine epidemic. He was openly gay, and was a strong advocate of safe sex, but diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. Between 1982 to 1989 he produced more than 50 public artworks in several charities, hospitals, day care centers, and orphanages. He used his art during the last years of his life to speak about his illness and generate activism and awareness about AIDS.
He established the Keith Haring Foundation in 1989 to provide funding and imagery to AIDS organizations and children’s programs, and to expand the audience of his work. The goal of the foundation is to keep Keith’s wishes and expand his heritage, art, and goals by providing grants and funding to nonprofit organizations that target educating disadvantaged youths and informing individuals about HIV and AIDS. The foundation also supports arts and educational institutions by funding exhibitions, educational programs, and publications. Keith passed away in February 1990 of AIDs related complications.
