Contemporary monographs in American studies perhaps infrequently feature scatter-plot analyses, an “event–history analysis,” or an appendix elucidating the author's statistical models. However, Anthony Chen's The Fifth Freedom successfully combines quantitative methodologies with sound archival research in an innovative and provocative model of interdisciplinary scholarship. This thoughtful history of postwar debates over fair employment practices (FEP) legislation and the development of affirmative action is a significant contribution to scholarship on postwar civil rights debates, political culture, and the rise of American conservatism.
Chen's analysis of affirmative action's development relies upon the theoretical model of “counterfactuals,” arguing that understanding a particular outcome requires examining the reasons why other potential outcomes failed to materialize (25–26). Maintaining that legislation creating an agency capable of sanctioning employers who refused to end discriminatory practices offered an alternative to the court-based model that eventually emerged, Chen demonstrates that after World War II, southern democrats and conservative republicans repeatedly mobilized the legislative branch's peculiarities to defeat northern democratic and liberal republican supporters of such legislation.
Chen next examines state-level fair-employment debates, where in the late 1940s “success seemed easier to achieve” and which liberals hoped would encourage federal legislation (117). Chen's rich analysis of New York State's Ives-Quinn Act uncovers essentially the same pattern as that in the US Congress, yet his contention that after the act's passage “the racial character of the labor force … began changing without great discord” compellingly shows that FEP legislation with enforceable provisions constituted a viable alternative to affirmative action as it eventually emerged (113). Analysis of similar debates elsewhere combines impressive research with innovative statistical modeling to illustrate that “no single factor was more consistently important than the opposition of the conservative bloc” (119).
Having shown the recurring obstacles to comprehensive FEP legislation, Chen returns to the national stage and “traces the limits of Congressional action … in the 1960s and early 1970s to the same combination of political forces that obstructed FEP legislation in earlier decades” (172–73). Nuanced accounts of the legislative maneuvering that produced an impotent Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the evolving meanings of “affirmative action” with the executive branch, and the increasing emergence of the federal courts as a venue for resolving employment complaints effectively demonstrate that “racially attentive public policies … found ample room to grow in the executive and judicial branches … because Congress had proven unwilling to assert itself by establishing a federal agency with reasonable authority” (227).
Although shifts among historical moments and legislative debates can risk confusion, reiterations of the key claims can seem repetitious, and Chen's “special emphasis on … elite groups” threatens to marginalize activism by the NAACP and other groups, The Fifth Freedom is a comprehensive, compelling account of affirmative action's development (23, original emphasis). Appropriate for graduate-level methods courses, where Chen's incisive use of quantitative models should prompt valuable discussion of scholarly approaches, this impressive contribution to scholarship on postwar US culture should be read by any student of twentieth-century America.
