David Bernstein has a fascinating post with some suprising history that, but for a watchful reader, I might have missed since I was traveling. Be sure to read the comments as well.
As of this writing, none of the commenters has mentioned that “affirmative action” made the transition to preferential hiring under a Republican president, Richard Nixon. As historian and Nixon biographer Joan Hoff Wilson has written:
While Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had employed the term “affirmative action,” it “did not have much bite” until the Nixon administration announced a revised “Philadelphia Plan” in 1969 requiring federal contractors in the construction industry to hire minority workers. Secretary of Labor George Shultz later extended this plan to nine other cities. Shultz also issued the first guidelines requiring businesses with federal contracts to draw up “action plans” for hiring and promoting women.[ Note omitted] In other words, not until the Nixon administration did “affirmative action” begin to become synonymous with “civil rights.” When the Rehnquist court decided in City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson, 109 S. Ct. 706 (1989) that “set asides” for minority construction workers were unconstitutional, much to the surprise of most Americans, legal specialists recalled that they had been initiated with the Philadelphia Plan twenty years earlier by the Nixon administration.
To say that “affirmative action” became synonymous with “civil rights” under Nixon is a considerable overstatement, but it is certainly legitimate to trace the elimination of the “without regard” principle from affirmative action to him. Indeed, one could go on, by pointing out Republican responsibility for “majority/minority” voting districts, but that would be too depressing….
