Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Introduction
- PART I COLOR-BLIND GROUNDWORK, 1940–1961
- PART II COLOR-CONSCIOUS ASCENDANCY, 1961–1990
- 6 How Compliance Became Voluntarism
- 7 The National Association of Manufacturers Helps Out
- 8 Changing Hiring Criteria
- 9 The Du Pont Company's Affirmative Action Efforts
- Epilogue: From Affirmative Action to Diversity
- Statistical Tables
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgments
- Index
- References
9 - The Du Pont Company's Affirmative Action Efforts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Introduction
- PART I COLOR-BLIND GROUNDWORK, 1940–1961
- PART II COLOR-CONSCIOUS ASCENDANCY, 1961–1990
- 6 How Compliance Became Voluntarism
- 7 The National Association of Manufacturers Helps Out
- 8 Changing Hiring Criteria
- 9 The Du Pont Company's Affirmative Action Efforts
- Epilogue: From Affirmative Action to Diversity
- Statistical Tables
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgments
- Index
- References
Summary
Business, at least big business, accepts not only the overall concept of affirmative action by now, but knows that goals and timetables provide a way of showing that they are meeting the law.
A former director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, 1981The E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Company had never shown much interest in equal employment opportunity, the black community, or affirmative action until 1963, when it joined Plans for Progress. Even then its efforts to hire and promote minorities can best be described as lackluster. While the other companies we have thus far considered were at the forefront of integrating American business and industry, the Du Pont Company wasn't. Yet by the early 1970s, like so many other companies, it was forced to respond to racial unrest, government demands, business leadership, and public opinion, and make a concerted attempt to hire and promote minorities. The Du Pont Company's efforts to adjust to the new social and racial realities of the 1960s and 1970s were at once ambivalent and ambitious, and bring together the major themes of the previous chapters: the role of business leaders in changing attitudes and practices, the full acceptance of color-conscious hiring policies, the way integration strengthened human relations managerial techniques, and the adverse relationship between racial integration and labor union activity.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Racial Integration in Corporate America, 1940–1990 , pp. 255 - 279Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009