When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America

by Ira Katznelson

On this understanding it is important to identify recipients of affirmative compensation who have a direct relationship to the harm being remedied. This does not mean that they had to experience a specific act of discrimination directly. To qualify, however, it needs to be shown how discriminatory institutions, decisions, actions, and practices have negatively affected their circumstances. This approach does not limit remedies to individuals who have faced injustice directly, one at a time; neither does it justify remedies for African Americans as an exclusive group that has shared in a history of racism except when the harm, as in military segregation, was created with unambiguously racist categories.