ABSTRACT
The basis for United States (US) ethnic policy is the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Its immediate and long-range ramifications are stunning. The act, the broadest social legislation the federal government has ever enacted, ushered in an ethnic policy unique to the sixties and seventies. As ethnic policy has evolved, minorities have become entitled to affirmative action benefits as a remedy for discrimination, and in some cases, the courts have decided that affirmative action is appropriate even absent findings of discrimination. As far as federal ethnic policy is concerned, all non-Hispanic white ethnics — Europeans, North Africans, and Middle Eastern peoples — are part of the dominant racial group of the US Since 1964, federal ethnic policy has demonstrated a philosophy of enforced, relatively rapid, social change, with racial minorities and Hispanics as beneficiaries. Imigration trends will have a profound impact on future ethnic policy.
