Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

Affirmative Action: Jewish Ideals, Jewish Interests \\ 307
1. There is a long-standing history of systematic and egregious discrimination;
and
2. The workforce is substantially segregated (i.e., token representatives
at most, and not merely underrepresented in relation to the population,
pool, or workforce) by race, gender, or ethnicity; and
3. Appropriate remedies such as programs of training, education, and
vigorous recruitment.. .have been unsuccessful; and
4. Implementation of preferential relief is explicitly limited to a defined
duration, at which time its continuation must be re-evaluated in
light of then-existing conditions. 40
Thus, if a history of "egregious discrimination" and nothing more than a
token minority-group presence existed in an industry or workplace, race could be
considered as the determining factor. Absent these narrow circumstances, the
ADL was opposed to goals and timetables, which it believed were quotas.
Significantly the ADL, following what the Supreme Court had already mandated,
went further than goals and timetables. But at its November 1995 annual
meeting, ADL's National Commission rejected by a solid vote a policy that would
have lowered the threshold of race for the ADL as an affirmative-action trigger for
remedies such as preferential treatment. The proposed policy in essence said that
race should be a factor (again, not the predominant one) in hiring, even without
"egregious discrimination" or "token presence." The split in the voting was largely
generational, with younger leaders more inclined to consider race as a factor.
AJCongress, in recent years a "hard-liner" on cognate affirmative-action
issues, such as redistricting, in 1994 and 1995 studied the threshold at which
goals and timetables should kick in. Ultimately, while still opposing quotas,
AJCongress supported court-ordered goals and timetables given a finding of
discrimination.
For the third time since 1975, NJCRAC engaged in another go-around on
affirmative action in 1994, and following much discussion left its policy
unchanged. The 1995-96 Joint Program Plan, in a message to "hard-liners" in the
Jewish community, said,
Although misuse of affirmative action has been acknowledged in some
cases, and anecdotal evidence of reverse discrimination has been provided,
there is at present little hard statistical evidence of widespread abuse.
According to a 1992 Urban Institute study, reverse discrimination is rare.
On the other hand, research is available which documents continued workplace
discrimination against Blacks, other minorities, and women/* 1