An analysis of the issue of affirmative action in colleges in the united states of america

Read my article as an introduction to the mismatch school of thought. Pick up the book for the full treatment of the topic.

Where there are fewer women or minorities than would be reasonably expected, the employer has to establish goals. Numerical goals do not create guarantees for specific groups or preferences, nor are they designed to achieve proportional representation or equal results.

No requirement exists that any specific position be filled by a person of a particular race, gender or ethnicity. By casting a wider net and recruiting a diverse pool of qualified individuals, an affirmative action employer eliminates preferences and levels the playing field for all.

The essence of affirmative action is opportunity. In seeking to achieve its goals, an employer is never required to hire a person who does not have the qualifications needed to perform the job successfully. Affirmative action prevents discrimination; it does not cause it.

The Executive Order does not require that contractors treat goals as either a ceiling or a floor for the employment of particular groups. The standard is and has always been "good faith effort.

Affirmative Action Programs benefit women, persons with disabilities and veterans as well. The emphasis is on opportunity: The debate over affirmative action demarcates a philosophical divide, separating those with sharply different views of the "American dilemma" -- how the nation should treat African Americans, other people of color and women.

This division centers on a number of questions: The continuing need for affirmative action is demonstrated by the data. In Fiscal Year there were 88, charges of discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: According to Diversity in Higher Education.

Minority representation in faculty, administrators, and governing boards do not match minority representation in the student body: These initiatives were at least modestly successful, bringing about African-American participation in elections for the first time.

Sporadic efforts to remedy the results of hundreds of years of slavery, segregation and denial of opportunity have been made since the end of the Civil War. A significant number of African Americans held public office, including two U. But when the federal government withdrew its support for Reconstruction in the late s, the gains made by African Americans were quickly stripped away and replaced by a patchwork system of legal segregation including, in some instances, legal segregation of Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans as well.

Byin Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court upheld the cornerstone segregationist doctrine of "separate but equal" - i.

In the modern era, the concept of affirmative action was reborn on June 25,when President Franklin Roosevelt -- seeking to avert a march on Washington organized by civil rights pioneer A.

Philip Randolph -- issued Executive Order requiring defense contractors to pledge nondiscrimination in employment in government-funded projects.

Two years later, President Roosevelt extended coverage of the executive order to all federal contractors and subcontractors. But it also found "the wartime gains of Negro, Mexican-American and Jewish workers.

The Stakes

This was succeeded by another executive order Executive Order issued by President Lyndon Johnson, along with the creation of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance in the Department of Labor to enforce its non-discrimination and affirmative action requirements.

The Executive Order was amended in to include prohibitions on sex discrimination by federal contractors, along with a requirement that they engage in good faith efforts to expand job opportunities for women.

Executive Order remains among the most effective and far-reaching federal programs for expanding equal opportunity. Implementation of affirmative action started slowly, with the construction industry the site of one of the first tests.

Inthe Office of Federal Contract Compliance created government-wide programs to redress the years of discrimination in the construction industry.

The series of affirmative action programs was designed to boost minority employment by emphasizing hiring results in federally funded construction jobs.

In the Rehabilitation Act required federal agencies and contractors to take affirmative action in employment and promotion for people with disabilities.

The Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act of called for "the preferential employment of disabled veterans and veterans of the Vietnam era Affirmative action was understood to be the creation of opportunities to compete and not an assurance of success.

The various programs culminated in the "Philadelphia Plan," implemented under President Nixon. This plan required contractors doing business with the federal government to commit themselves to self-determined numerical goals for minorities.

By withstanding challenges both in Congress and the courts, the Philadelphia Plan helped establish affirmative action as a way of life for American employers. Indeed, employers often embraced affirmative action as a good business practice, enabling them to tap into larger, more diverse, and more qualified pools of talent.

Affirmative action policies are those in which an institution or organization actively engages in efforts to improve opportunities for historically excluded groups in American society. Affirmative action policies often focus on employment and education. Affirmative action's opponents failed in their attempts to move legislation in the late s that would have banned all federal affirmative action programs. In fact, in , Congress reauthorized the disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE) program run by the Department of Transportation (DOT) by an overwhelming bipartisan vote. According to a recent survey, Americans don’t like racial preferences. This is not news, being quite in line with many earlier polls, but the time and place here are rather propitious, with the Harvard affirmative-action case going to trial next week.

In a letter to President Reagan, the business group said it "believes the current executive order provides the framework for an affirmative action policy" and argued that "the business community is concerned that the elimination of goals and timetables could result in confusing compliance standards on federal, state and municipal levels and a proliferation of reverse discrimination suits.What Senator Feinstein et al.

see as an “abrupt and extremely troubling shift in policy,” the American people see as common sense. ARGUING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Sandel describes the court case of a white woman named Cheryl Hopwood who was denied admission to a Texas law school, even though she had higher grades and test scores than some of the minority applicants who were admitted.

Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision upholding Michigan’s ban on affirmative action affects more than college admissions, and more than just Michigan. Seven other states have similarly broad bans in their constitutions or statute books, and opponents of affirmative action have called on other.

Return to FAA/Educators: Affirmative Action and Financial Aid.

Affirmative action is often defined as the effort to improve access to higher education for minority and female students. Race-based affirmative action has been losing support in the United States for some time with other “colorblind” methods of admissions gaining ground.

But there are still compelling arguments for why affirmative action in . I have personally been racially discriminated for over 30 years in the work place as a result of affirmative action. In each case, my immediate supervisor or manager was a minority, and in each and every case, that minority supervisor or manager showed favoritism towards members of their own minority group, applying double standards in the process (one for whites, one for members of their.