Was the Addition of Sex to Title VII a Joke Two Viewpoints. Scott Highhouse. Bowling Green State University. Note This edition of the History Corner includes two views on how sex ended up as a protected class under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1. Estimating Unpaid Claims Using Basic Techniques Jacqueline Friedland, FCAS, FCIA, MAAA, FCA KPMG LLP With significant contributions by Rachel Dutil, FCAS, FCIA and. Perspective. FDA Approval of Flibanserin Treating Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder. Hylton V. Joffe, M. D., M. M. Sc., Christina Chang, M. D., M. P. H, Catherine. Dear Instructor, We have had to temporarily removed Ch. Activity 1, from the BCS due to technical issues. As a result, students will be unable to complete the. I initially wrote an essay advocating the con side it was not a joke and asked Art Gutman if he would provide commentsand possible corrections to my legalese. Art liked my article but was still sympathetic to the pro side it was a joke. So, I thought it would be best to present both sides. After all, history is all about providing unique interpretations of events. Art Gutmans addendum directly follows this article. I O Urban Legend. Viewpoints 12 Textbook' title='Viewpoints 12 Textbook' />Scott Highhouse. Bowling Green State University. The addition of sex to protected classes under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1. It not only provided protection against unfair discrimination in hiring, firing, and promotion, it also set the stage for protection against sexual harassment in the workplace. Title VII was the foundation upon which the hostile work environment theory was built into case law. Many students of employment law are aware that sex was added at the last minute to race, religion, color, and national origin as protected classes. Dotnetnuke 6 Install New Module Builder. In fact, conventional wisdom suggests that sex was added to the bill in order to kill itThis conclusion was reached by legal scholars of the period e. Vaas, 1. 96. 6 and is repeated in I O psychology textbooks on employee selection. For example, Guion 1. Act p. 1. 66. Berry 2. According to Gold 1. Viewpoints 12 Textbook' title='Viewpoints 12 Textbook' />The conventional view is that sex was added as a protected class to the employment discrimination title of the Civil Rights Act of 1. Was the addition of sex to Title VII really a joke gone terribly wrong for the hapless jokester The arguments in favor of the joke hypothesis are fairly strong. The amendment to add sex to Title VII was introduced 2 days before the vote by Representative Howard W. Smith aka Judge Smith, a Democrat from Virginia who was vocally opposed to civil rights for Blacks. His introduction of the amendment stimulated hours of humorous debate in the House of Representatives, which some referred to as ladies day in the House. Adding to the hilarity, Judge Smith read a letter from a constituent who wanted him to introduce another amendment on behalf of women I suggest that you might also favor an amendment or a bill to correct the present imbalance which exists between males and females in the United States. Access our free college textbooks and lowcost learning materials. Viewpoints 12 Textbook' title='Viewpoints 12 Textbook' />The census of 1. Just why the Creator would set up such an imbalance of spinsters, shutting off the right of every female to have a husband of her own, is, of course, known only to nature. But I am sure you will agree that this is a grave injustice to womankind and something the congress and president Johnson should take immediate steps to correct, especially in this election year. Would you have any suggestions as to what course our Government might pursue to protect our spinster friends in their right to a nice husband and family One can imagine this scene playing out like an episode of Mad Men, a fictional television series set in the 1. Indeed, it seems that Judge Smith was introducing this amendment because it would be seen, in 1. After all, Smith ultimately voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1. One problem with this hypothesis, however, is that it ignores Judge Smiths close relationship with the National Womens Party NWP. Smith had a history of speaking in favor of a sex amendment since 1. NWP as our Rock of Gibraltar see Freeman, 1. In fact, prior to his introduction of the amendment, Judge Smith responded on Meet the Press to a question from a female reporter also a member of the NWP about whether he planned to put equal rights for women in Title VII I might do that, he said. This episode suggests that the introduction of Smiths amendment was not a last minute ambush on the Civil Rights Act but an anticipated behavior by a politician seen as an ally in the fight for womens rights. The notion that the addition of sex to the bill was intended to derail it is also belied by the fact that the sex provision was barely mentioned during the 8. Senate Gold, 1. 98. If the amendment was meant to create rioting in the halls of Congress, then the sponsor would have been wildly off in his prediction. It seems unlikely that Smith, a very powerful Rules Committee chairman and leader of the conservative coalition, would have misjudged the landscape so completely. The standards will guide textbook purchases and classroom instruction over the next decade and maybe not just in Texas. National publishers usually cater to its. When academics embraced scientific racism, immigration restrictions, and the suppression of the unfit. Volume 6, No. 2, Art. May 2005 Participant Observation as a Data Collection Method. Barbara B. Kawulich. Abstract Observation, particularly participant. Welcome to the Blackboard eEducation platformdesigned to enable educational innovations everywhere by connecting people and technology. Smith was also concerned that Title VII as written would hurt White women disproportionately. Smith commented The first thing that an employer will look at unless the Smith amendment is approved will be the provision with regard to the records he must keep. If he does not employ that colored woman and has to make that record, the employer will say, Well, now, if I hire the colored woman I will not be in any trouble, but if I do not hire the colored woman and hire the white woman, then the EEO Commission is going to be looking down my throat and will want to know why I did not. I may be in a lawsuit. That will happen as surely as we are here this afternoon. You all know it. This issue would have been especially salient in an era when mens and womens jobs were highly segregated by gender stereotypes. Thus, the Smith amendment seemed motivated not only by a desire to end sex discrimination in employment but also to ensure that White women did not get the short end of the stick. Why, therefore, did Smith vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1. Smith was a noted racist, but he was aware that the tide of public sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of having the bill pass. In other words, Smith may have felt that, as long as the bill was going to pass, he was going to ensure that protection for women in the workplace was going to be part of it. His vote against the bill was predictable, given his beliefs about White superiority and pressure from his conservative coalition. It seems that the conventional wisdom about how sex ended up in Title VII is another example of an I O urban legend. As Freeman 1. 99. Despite the humor that Smith injected into the Ladies Day debate, what evidence there is does not indicate that he had proposed his amendment as a joke p. Interesting, however, is how early this legend originated. Title VII Legislative History by Francis Vaas was written in 1. Smith offered the amendment in a spirit of satire and ironic cajolery. Although Vaas never says that the amendment was introduced to derail the bill, he certainly implies it when he points out that Edith Green, author of the Equal Pay Act, spoke out against the amendment. Later scholars have noted, however, that Green was the only congresswoman to speak against the amendment five congresswomen spoke in favor of it and was concerned that ending discrimination toward Blacks was a more pressing societal issue. Many supporters of the Civil Rights Act, including the Johnson administration, felt that it was necessary to separate legislation aimed at racial discrimination from legislation aimed at sex discrimination. A negative outcome of the early interpretation i. EEOC to take sex discrimination less seriously than racial discrimination. Freeman commented that the EEOC viewed the sex amendment as a fluke that was conceived out of wedlock, and tried to ignore its existence 1. Harvards eugenics era Harvard Magazine. In August 1. 91. 2, Harvard president emeritus Charles William Eliot addressed the Harvard Club of San Francisco on a subject close to his heart racial purity. It was being threatened, he declared, by immigration. Eliot was not opposed to admitting new Americans, but he saw the mixture of racial groups it could bring about as a grave danger. Each nation should keep its stock pure, Eliot told his San Francisco audience. There should be no blending of races. Eliots warning against mixing raceswhich for him included Irish Catholics marrying white Anglo Saxon Protestants, Jews marrying Gentiles, and blacks marrying whiteswas a central tenet of eugenics. The eugenics movement, which had begun in England and was rapidly spreading in the United States, insisted that human progress depended on promoting reproduction by the best people in the best combinations, and preventing the unworthy from having children. The former Harvard president was an outspoken supporter of another major eugenic cause of his time forced sterilization of people declared to be feebleminded, physically disabled, criminalistic, or otherwise flawed. In 1. 90. 7, Indiana had enacted the nations first eugenic sterilization law. Serial Number Test Drive Unlimited 2 more. Four years later, in a paper on The Suppression of Moral Defectives, Eliot declared that Indianas law blazed the trail which all free states must follow, if they would protect themselves from moral degeneracy. He also lent his considerable prestige to the campaign to build a global eugenics movement. He was a vice president of the First International Eugenics Congress, which met in London in 1. Northern Europeans and similar topics. Two years later, Eliot helped organize the First National Conference on Race Betterment in Battle Creek, Michigan. None of these actions created problems for Eliot at Harvard, for a simple reason they were well within the intellectual mainstream at the University. Harvard administrators, faculty members, and alumni were at the forefront of American eugenicsfounding eugenics organizations, writing academic and popular eugenics articles, and lobbying government to enact eugenics laws. And for many years, scarcely any significant Harvard voices, if any at all, were raised against it. Harvards role in the movement was in many ways not surprising. Eugenics attracted considerable support from progressives, reformers, and educated elites as a way of using science to make a better world. Harvard was hardly the only university that was home to prominent eugenicists. Stanfords first president, David Starr Jordan, and Yales most acclaimed economist, Irving Fisher, were leaders in the movement. The University of Virginia was a center of scientific racism, with professors like Robert Bennett Bean, author of such works of pseudo science as the 1. American Journal of Anatomy article, Some Racial Peculiarities of the Negro Brain. But in part because of its overall prominence and influence on society, and in part because of its sheer enthusiasm, Harvard was more central to American eugenics than any other university. Harvard has, with some justification, been called the brain trust of twentieth century eugenics, but the role it played is little remembered or remarked upon today. It is understandable that the University is not eager to recall its part in that tragically misguided intellectual movementbut it is a chapter too important to be forgotten. In part because of its overall prominence and influence on society, and in part because of its sheer enthusiasm, Harvard was more central to American eugenics than any other university. Eugenics emerged in England in the late 1. Francis Galton, a half cousin of Charles Darwin, began studying the families of some of historys greatest thinkers and concluded that genius was hereditary. Galton invented a new wordcombining the Greek for good and genesand launched a movement calling for society to take affirmative steps to promote the more suitable races or strains of blood. Echoing his famous half cousins work on evolution, Galton declared that what Nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. Eugenics soon made its way across the Atlantic, reinforced by the discoveries of Gregor Mendel and the new science of genetics. In the United States, it found some of its earliest support among the same group that Harvard had the wealthy old families of Boston. The Boston Brahmins were strong believers in the power of their own bloodlines, and it was an easy leap for many of them to believe that society should work to make the nations gene pool as exalted as their own. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. A. B. 1. 82. 9, M. D. LL. D. 8. 0, dean of Harvard Medical School, acclaimed writer, and father of the future Supreme Court justicewas one of the first American intellectuals to espouse eugenics. Endgame Database. Holmes, whose ancestors had been at Harvard since John Oliver entered with the class of 1. Galton. He had coined the phrase Boston Brahmin in an 1. Holmes believed eugenic principles could be used to address the nations social problems. In an 1. 87. 5 article in The Atlantic Monthly, he gave Galton an early embrace, and argued that his ideas could help to explain the roots of criminal behavior. If genius and talent are inherited, as Mr. Galton has so conclusively shown, Holmes wrote, why should not deep rooted moral defectsshow themselvesin the descendants of moral monstersAs eugenics grew in popularity, it took hold at the highest levels of Harvard. A. Lawrence Lowell, who served as president from 1. Lowell, who worked to impose a quota on Jewish students and to keep black students from living in the Yard, was particularly concerned about immigrationand he joined the eugenicists in calling for sharp limits. The need for homogeneity in a democracy, he insisted, justified laws resisting the influx of great numbers of a greatly different race. Lowell also supported eugenics research. When the Eugenics Record Office, the nations leading eugenics research and propaganda organization, asked for access to Harvard records to study the physical and intellectual attributes of alumni fathers and sons, he readily agreed. Lowell had a strong personal interest in eugenics research, his secretary noted in response to the request. The Harvard faculty contained some of nations most influential eugenics thinkers, in an array of academic disciplines. Frank W. Taussig, whose 1. Principles of Economics was one of the most widely adopted economics textbooks of its time, called for sterilizing unworthy individuals, with a particular focus on the lower classes. The human race could be immensely improved in quality, and its capacity for happy living immensely increased, if those of poor physical and mental endowment were prevented from multiplying, he wrote. Certain types of criminals and paupers breed only their kind, and society has a right and a duty to protect its members from the repeated burden of maintaining and guarding such parasites. Harvards geneticists gave important support to Galtons fledgling would be science. Botanist Edward M. East, who taught at Harvards Bussey Institution, propounded a particularly racial version of eugenics.