Racial Proportionalism and the Origins of Employment Discrimination Policy, 1933–1950

Abstract

The 1930s and 1940s saw the beginning of a discussion of the problem of racial discrimination in employment. The Great Depression, the maturation of civil rights organizations, and the New Deal's change in American principles of property rights and-labor policy helped launch this discussion. Campaigns undertaken by black organizations and federal agencies began to grapple with the idea of race-based remedial strategies to combat discrimination in employment, and our modern concept of equal employment opportunity, which holds that an employer's workforce should contain approximately the same proportion of minorities as are present in the population, first received expression in this period.