Race and workplace integration: A politically mediated process

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 stands as one of the greatest achievements in U.S. history. Although the law made discrimination illegal, its effectiveness, especially Title VII covering the employment domain, remains highly contested. The authors argue that legal shifts pro-duce workplace racial integration only to the extent that there are additional political pres-sures on firms to desegregate. They examine fluctuating national political pressure to enforce equal employment opportunity law and affirmative action mandates as key influences on the pace of workplace racial desegregation and explore trajectories of Black-White integration in U.S. workplaces since 1966. Their results show that although federal and state equal employment opportunity pressures had initial successes in reducing racial segregation in workplaces, little progress has been made since the early 1980s. They conclude that racial desegregation is an ongoing politically mediated process, not a natural or inevitable outcome of early civil rights movement victories