1. New Developments in Legal Theory, in The Politics of law: A Progressive Critique 281 ( Kairys D. ed. 1982).
2. In 1977, however, the Supreme Court upset even this dubious compromise, holding in International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324 (1977), that Congress intended to protect all facially neutral seniority rights regardless of the discriminatory effect on Black workers. In so holding, the Court rejected the government's contention that no seniority system that perpetuated pre-Act discrimination could be bona fide under Section 703(h). See id., 353. Teamsters represents a move toward a more restrictive view of discrimination in which the objective of eradicating racial subordination is limited by competing interests. As the various opinions concerning seniority suggest, interpretation of Section 703(h) boils down to a choice of which interest will take priority: the achievement of racial equality, or the protection of interests founded in the policies of white supremacy. Simply but, the issue was whether Black hopes of overcoming racial subordination would prevail over, or be defeated by, the status quo.
3. Antidiscrimination Law: A Critical Review, in The Politics of Law, supra, note 8, 96.
4. Minow, The Supreme Court, 1986 Term-Foreword: Justice Engendered, 101 Harv. L. Rev. 10, 32 (1987).
5. The observation concerning the inability to bring about change in some non-legitimating fashion does not, of course, rule out the possibility of armed revolution. For most oppressed peoples, however, the costs of such a revolt are often too great. That is, the oppressed cannot realistically hope to overcome the “coercive” components of hegemony. More importantly, it is not clear that such a struggle, although superficially a clear radical challenge to the coercive force of the status quo, would be a lesser reinforcement of the ideology of American society (i.e., the consensual components of hegemony).