After Civil Rights: Racial Realism in the New American Workplace by John D. Skrentny (review)

The African American police officer on a city beat, the Latino on a politician’s staff, the South Asian waiter at the local Indian restaurant: the racial or ethnic identity of the people in these jobs is rarely considered unusual or troubling. Most scholars examine the exclusion, not inclusion of minorities in jobs. In After Civil Rights, sociologist John Skrentny argues that the employment of minorities frequently violates a host of equal employment opportunity laws and constitutional guarantees of equal treatment. Many of these workers are in jobs, not on the basis of their qualifications (although many employers see one’s race as a kind of qualification), or to address historical, structural inequality. Instead, the “racial realism” at work in the hiring and promoting of minorities is motivated by a confusing mix of the well-intentioned goals of diversity and fairness, a practical way to gain profit or votes, and a toxic form of job typing by race and ethnicity. Although Skrentny doesn’t provide a figure for racial realism’s share of the total workforce he contends that it is sizeable. More importantly, it has come about with little forethought. “American employers’ strategies for managing race in the workplace are, to a large extent, unregulated,” he writes. (266)

Classical liberalism and affirmative action liberalism, not racial realism, have informed most laws and public policies. Conservatives insist that classical liberalism serves as a colour-blind means to reward individual merit and qualifications. There is no place, at least in theory, for racial realism. Liberals and progressives have tended to favour affirmative action liberalism as a way to offer educational and employment opportunities to racial and ethnic minorities. Skrentney allows that there is an overlap of affirmative action liberalism with racial realism. Some is due to the “bona fide occupational qualification” or “bfoq” exception provided in the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which allows for otherwise discriminatory hiring if there are considered reasonably necessary to the normal operation of a particular business (e.g., a men’s clothing manufacturer might lawfully advertise for a male model). More commonly, it is there with the use of the diversity justification as articulated by US Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell’s plurality decision in the landmark University of California v. Bakke (1978). In recent years, however, judges have increasingly narrowed the range of Bakke’s use.

Racial realism hiring takes different forms in different employment sectors. It is a regular and accepted practice in politics. Media companies – especially television and radio – use it to cater to their target audiences. Where it clashes with competing claims of qualification and merit, such as in police and fire departments as well as higher education, there have been fierce legal battles over its validity. Skrentny weighs the evidence of its value carefully. Does racial realism “work,” and for whom? Advertisers have clear reason to adopt racial realism. In the fields of law enforcement, judicial appointments, and education, however, the evidence is less clear. Is the “role model theory,” for example, a compelling argument for placing assigning a large number of Black teachers in a school with a predominantly Black student population? Although the evidence is mixed, Skrentny concludes, on a guarded note, that racial realism can produce positive results.

But he does note the dangers of racial realism for ethnic and racial minorities. Its use for appealing to students, consumers, and local residents can lock the racial realist workforce into a kind of employment ghetto. Large advertising agencies do not allow for adequate promotion of minority executives into the upper management positions. The film and television industry has a long history of “narrow casting” its actors. He identifies another problem: if the hiring of minority retail service workers and managers to interact with customers in a city or neighborhood store is legitimate, then a mostly white workforce in white areas seems legitimate as well. Skrentny warns of the corrosive effect of racial...