Southern Illinois University Carbondale OpenSIUC Emma Smith Hough Library Research Scholarship 2016 Awards Spring 5-6-2016 When Affirmative Action Is White: Italian Americans in the City University of New York, 1976 – Present Liana Kirillova
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/esh_2016 Recommended Citation Kirillova, Liana. "When Affirmative Action Is White: Italian Americans in the City University of New York, 1976 – Present." (Spring 2016). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Emma Smith Hough Library Research Scholarship Awards at OpenSIUC. It has been accepted for inclusion in 2016 by an authorized administrator of OpenSIUC. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. When Affirmative Action Is White: Italian Americans in the City University of New York, 1976 – Present Liana Kirillova MA Student in the Department of History Southern Illinois University at Carbondale 1 Present day discussion of affirmative action is usually confined to its association with minority groups included in federal racial and ethnic categories. The general public is typically aware of discrimination cases against Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians because the media and scholarship on affirmative action are dedicated to these particular groups. Only a small share of research is conducted on white ethnics and their efforts to pursue equal opportunity. Despite the general failure of the white ethnic movement, one group was able to succeed on the local level: Italian Americans in New York City. In 1976, the City University of New York (CUNY) unprecedentedly included Italian Americans in its affirmative action policy, providing them with the status of a designated minority.