York: Bantam Books, 1991. Provides unique in-
sights into the Civil Rights movement by collect-
ing first-person accounts of the fight for civil
rights from those who participated in it.
Kitwana, Bakari.The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks
and the Crisis in African American Culture.New
York: Basic Civitas, 2002. In-depth discussion of
the hip-hop cultural movement with particular
emphasis on its meaning to African American
youth. Also focuses on the negative stereotypes
promoted in the images associated with the music.
Mar y McElroy
See also Affirmative action; Atlanta child mur-
ders; Basquiat, Jean-Michel;Beloved;Bonfire of the
Vanities, The; Brawley, Tawana; Central Park jogger
case;Color Purple, The;Cosby Show, The; Crack epi-
demic;Do the Right Thing; Elections in the United
States, 1988; Goetz, Bernhard; Griffith-Joyner, Flor-
ence; Hawkins, Yusef; Hip-hop and rap; Holmes,
Larry; Horton, William; Houston, Whitney; Howard
Beach incident; Jackson, Bo; Jackson, Jesse; Jackson,
Michael; Johnson, Magic; Kincaid, Jamaica; Leon-
ard, Sugar Ray; Lewis, Carl; Marriage and divorce;
Martin Luther King Day; Minorities in Canada;
MOVE; Mr. T; MTV; Murphy, Eddie; Nation of Yah-
weh; Prince; Public Enemy; Racial discrimination;
Reaganomics; Rice, Jerry; Richie, Lionel; Run-
D.M.C.; Thomas, Isiah; Turner, Tina; Tyson, Mike;
Washington, Harold; Williams, Vanessa L., Wilson,
August; Winfrey, Oprah.
Age discrimination
Identification Unequal treatment of a person
based on age
During the 1980’s, the laws protecting workers from age
discrimination were significantly expanded, both by court
rulings and by statutor y amendments. By the end of the de-
cade, federal law provided more protections to more people
than ever before, and it created a correspondingly larger
number of obligations on the part of employers.
The most important law banning discrimination
based on age in the United States is the Age Discrim-
ination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967, which
initially covered employment discrimination in the
private sector for those aged forty to sixty-five. As
later amended, it empowers the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate al-
legations of age discrimination, issue rulings, and
negotiate with errant employers on behalf of vic-
tims.
Originally, the ADEA had many exceptions. Em-
ployers with fewer than twenty employees were ex-
empt, as were elected officials when choosing their
personal staffs or appointing policy makers. More-
over, the law did not protect legal advisers on specific
cases, firefighters and law-enforcement officials, or
corporate executives eligible for pensions of $27,000
or more. However, coverage expanded in the 1970’s
to include employees of federal, state, and local gov-
ernments; mandatory retirement was abolished for
federal workers, and the highest age covered was
raised to seventy. Nevertheless, courts have allowed
“reasonable factors” to permit employers to favor
younger over older workers. For example, it is per-
missible to favor younger workers if an employer can
demonstrate that age is a “bona fide occupational
qualification” (BFOQ) for a given job.
InGeller v. Markham(1980), the U.S. Court of Ap-
peals for the Second Circuit ruled that age discrimi-
nation occurred when a school district hired a
twenty-six-year-old teacher instead of a fifty-five-year-
old teacher because the school district sought to
save money. The case was appealed to the Supreme
Court asMarkham v. Geller(1981), but the high court
refused to review the decision, which effectively
banned the West Hartford, Connecticut, school
board from cutting costs by hiring less experienced
teachers.
During the 1980’s, the ADEA was amended on
several occasions. In 1982, the health-benefits guar-
antee was extended to age seventy, and mandatory
retirement for tenured teachers was repealed. In
1984-1985, the health-benefits guarantee was ex-
tended to spouses of employees up to the age of sev-
enty, coverage was extended to overseas employees
of American corporations, and mandatory retire-
ment of corporate executives was disallowed unless
their annual pensions were at least $44,000.
Amendments in 1986 eliminated mandatory re-
tirement for private-sector workers and required em-
ployers to extend health-insurance benefits to work-
ers beyond age seventy. In 1987, Congress banned
denial of accrued pension benefits for those working
after the age of sixty-five. A 1988 amendment ex-
tended the time limit for filing EEOC complaints.
States’ rights advocates, who wanted to preventThe Eighties in America Age discrimination 31