Weldon Latham is a senior partner in the Washington, D.C., regional office of Jackson Lewis LLP, chair of the firm’s corporate diversity counseling group and diversity advisory board chair for Deloitte.
Affirmative action was a hallmark accomplishment of the civil-rights movement. Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Executive Order 11246, which prohibits federal contractors that conduct $10,000 or more in business annually from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, affirmative action has been an integral part of the legal landscape in the workplace. But some state school-admission initiatives and recent court rulings have caused affirmative action to come under attack. Racism and sexism, however, still exist.
Last year, for instance, the unemployment rate for Black-male college grads was 8.4 percent—nearly twice that of their white counterparts (4.4 percent). Is the equal-opportunity progress made during the civil-rights era losing traction Why has affirmative action become such a political target To get the answers, Fair360, formerly DiversityInc asked discrimination-law attorney Weldon Latham, who has been counseling corporations and federal agencies about affirmative action, equal opportunity and diversity for more than two decades.
