Description
Book SynopsisBrian Calfano and Valerie Martinez-Ebers examine the history and current efforts of human relations commissions in promoting positive intergroup outcomes and enforcing antidiscrimination laws. Drawing on a wide range of theories and methods, they assess policy approaches, successes, and failures in four cities.
Trade ReviewHuman Relations Commissions provides historical and practical details on beginning, continuing, and expanding human relations commissions. Calfano and Martinez-Ebers aptly highlight the tools necessary for engaging and identifying potential partners to promote good relations in any community. -- Beverly Watts, former president of the International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies and executive director of the Tennessee Human Rights Commission
Calfano and Martinez-Ebers have provided needed focus on local policy making by turning to human relations commissions and examining the effects of their work—not just on the communities they are created to serve but also on the leaders themselves who invest so greatly in the effort of making our pluralistic society more congenial. This is important work. -- Gary Segura, dean of the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA
Human Relations Commissions presents an important application of bureaucracy and public administration literatures. This in-depth assessment demonstrates that staffers embody values that are critical in making both governments and neighborhoods fair and responsive to diverse constituencies. This book should be required reading for those interested in equity, public values, and the role of local governments. -- Kenneth J. Meier, coauthor of
The Politics of African American Education: Representation, Partisanship, and Educational EquityFilling a canyon-like void in political science, urban studies, policy and administration, and more,
Human Relations Commissions opens a whole new world to the relationship of HRCs and municipal governments. The synthesis of the authors’ varied methodologies and research orientations has created a fascinating book. -- John Bretting, University of Texas at El Paso
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Too Big a Task?
1. Human Relations Commissions: Creativity in Constraint
2. The History of Intergroup Relations in America
3. Origins and Development of Organized Human Relations Efforts
4. The Humans Who Must Relate
5. Experimenting with the Dynamics of Intergroup Identity
6. Reporting and Responding to Community
7. Imagining Human Relations for the Future
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
