Chapter 7 examines the belief by some that affirmative action amounts to reverse racism and reverse sexism. The distinction between affirmative action and equal opportunity is described, as is the common belief that affirmative action involves quotas (quotas are illegal). Practices that undermine meritocracy in both college admissions and in employment are explored. These practices include legacy admissions, donors, and, in the context of employment, biases in job selection. Chapter 7 makes the case for the need of affirmative action because subtle forms of bias infiltrate all aspects of employment. The chapter critically examines the argument that diversity benefits organizations. The chapter ends with a discussion of goal-oriented versus process-oriented affirmative action plans, and other strategies to reduce bias in admissions and employment.

Increasing educational standards in the workforce have increased the use of experts throughout the economy, leading to processes that more closely resemble bureaucracies and stakeholder policymaking, with an increasing emphasis on culturally liberal values such as diversity, representation, and social responsibility. The guiding industries and workforces of the scientific and technology sectors have enabled a technocratic ethos in government and industry. But public opposition to technocracy and skepticism of meritocracy is growing among voters, allowing conservatism to brand itself as an opposition movement to the extension of government reach and the associated prevalence of “politically correct” messages and practices across educational institutions and in the workplace. The polarized American brand of politics pervades internal debates across organizational sectors, enlarging the scope of activist politics beyond campaigns and government, especially where educational and cultural divides are strongest. The distinct styles of the culture war’s two conflicting sides have become more dissimilar at the national, state, and local levels, even in ostensibly apolitical arenas.

Abstract: This chapter explores the potential of mathematics education for the formation of critical democratic habits of open-mindedness, flexibility, and concern for understanding. It shows how different approaches to the teaching of math serve to model different conceptions of authority and analyzes the implications that these conceptions have for democratic engagement.

Chapter 9 extends our examination of Group Empathy Theory outside the United States using data from the British Election Study (BES) in May 2018. The BES included our short version of the Group Empathy Index (GEI). It also included a ten-item individual-level empathy scale, which allowed us to compare the predictive power of intergroup empathy versus interpersonal empathy. Group empathy significantly predicts the British public’s opinion across a myriad of policy issues, including opposition to Brexit, favorable perceptions of immigration, support for equal opportunity policies, social welfare, and foreign aid. By comparison, individual empathy has very little effect on most of these policy views. In line with our theory and consistent with the findings from the United States, nonwhite minorities in the United Kingdom score higher on the GEI than whites do, while no significant intergroup differences are observed when it comes to individual-level empathy. The data indicates large gaps in policy opinions between whites and nonwhites, and group empathy once again helps explain these differences.

Poverty and social exclusion are a gendered phenomenon. They are rooted deeply in the stereotypes, biases, prejudices, and discriminations against women, especially those suffering from poor living conditions. Unfortunately, gender inequality is manifested in most, if not all, major life domains. It is therefore important to understand the gender aspect of poverty and social exclusion through a psychological lens. We begin this chapter by introducing the concepts of multi-dimensional poverty and social exclusion with a sketch of the gender disparities displayed in these areas. We turn next to several mainstream psychological theories which have attempted to investigate and interpret the relationship between poverty and gender inequality from the dispositional, motivational, cognitive, and behavioural perspectives. Finally, we evaluate the reliability, objectivity, and generalisability of the reviewed theories and studies and offer suggestions for future research.