jure entitlement to contracting opportunities by reason of long-standing de facto exclusion therefrom. Advocates of affirmative action programs cite efforts by "right-wing politicians . . . [to] attack programs designed to achieve parity and economic empowerment" for racial and socioeconomic minorities. On the other hand, in 1996 the cities of Houston, Texas, and Boston, Massachusetts, voted to let affirmative action programs remain in place.
Whatever the source of opposition to government-mandated institutional protection of minority-population access to jobs and contracts funded by government money, such protections have had beneficial effects on minority populations in the recent past. As Smith et al., note, "for black women in particular, public employment has been a forum for upward mobility." A decline in public support for affirmative action protections implies a tolerance for structures of public employment and public contracting that were in place before the imposition of equal opportunity laws. Inevitably, an element at issue in such an environmen
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