Affirmative Action is the set of public policies and initiatives designed to help eliminate past and present discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Affirmative action was set into place during the 1960's. Focusing in particular on education and jobs, affirmative action policies required that active measures be taken to ensure that blacks and other minorities enjoyed the same opportunities for promotions, salary increases, career advancement, school admissions, scholarships, and financial aid that had been the nearly exclusive province of whites. However, despite its good intentions, affirmative action has actually created more problems than it has solved, explaining why so many are now calling for an end to its policies. Affirmative action violates our United States Constitution, favors the middle and upper class, allows unqualified entry to universities and jobs, promotes racism and fosters further discrimination.
Affirmative action really is all about quotas rather than eliminating race as a factor in the decision making process. And, quotas are unconstitutional because they violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, equal protection under the law. Recently, the Justice Department filed two briefs with the Supreme Court challenging race-based admissions policies at the University of Michigan. U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the Supreme Court that the undergraduate and Law School admissions cases "demonstrate the pernicious consequences that result when public institutions deviate from this court's precedents by ignoring race-neutral alternatives and employing race-based polices that amount to racial quotas." From 1995 until 1998, the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions policy set aside a target number of seats in each entering class for preferred minorities and shielded minorities from competition with the rest of the application pool. Now, the university gives preferred minorities a bonus in admissions evaluations based solely on their race.
If preferences were truly meant to remedy disadvantage, they would be given on the basis of disadvantage, not on the basis of factors such as race and ethnicity. Instead, the benefactors of affirmative action are middle and upper class individuals that don't need the help. The most under-represented group of Americans at the nation's top colleges and colleges isn't blacks or Hispanics, but students from low-income families. Only three percent of the freshmen at the 146 most selective colleges and universities come from families in the bottom quarter of America ranked by income. In contrast, twelve percent are black or Hispanic.
Even the Center for Equal Opportunity is opposed to affirmative action because it has been such an unfair windfall for wealthy minority business people. The Code of Federal Regulations considers Individuals who certify that they are members of named groups (Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian-Pacific, Sub-continental-Asian) to be considered socially and economically disadvantaged. Some programs also presume women to be socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. So, by definition, if an individual fits into any of these categories, he or she is disadvantaged. According to the Center for Equal Opportunity, federal regulations that govern the communications industry are filled with minority preferences that don't consider income. In one famous case, then-mayor of Charlotte, N.C., Harvey Gantt, who is black, and his partners made a $3 million profit by obtaining a license for a TV station under the minority-preference bidding process and then selling it four months later to whites. The biggest boons for minority and female-owned businesses are the various set-aside programs for government contractors and sub-contractors. These rules affect everything from surface transportation which requires that ten percent of federal monies go to minority and female contractors, to the space program, which requires that eight percent of the total value of such contracts go to such firms.
Affirmative action doesn't always mean that equally qualified or best qualified people are admitted to colleges and jobs, but allows lesser qualified people to get in. It isn't right to admit a student or select a job application who is minimally qualified, and thus, less least likely to succeed. Because the only qualifications that have any value under affirmative action are skin color, gender and ethnicity, affirmative action lowers standards of excellence with disastrous consequences. For example, of the 317 black students admitted to UC Berkeley in 1985, all were admitted under affirmative action criteria...
Affirmative Action in Procurement/Contracting Affirmative action programs in procurement are amongst the more significant government programs proposed to progress self-employment prospects for minorities as well as women. In essence, the policy on affirmative action with regard to procurement or contracting necessitates that business concerns owned by women or the minorities, shall have the utmost gaining prospect to take part as supplies for goods and services. This also takes into account construction,
With this ruling the Court upheld legality of affirmative action. In considering the reasoning behind the Court's upholding of the highly debated principle, the rationale was that to remedy past discrimination, a program that is race-based must be put into effect. Clearly, the Court was concerned with becoming intertwined in the daily administration of academic programs, and the same would have likely held true for the workplace. The Bakke case had
Affirmative Action is an organization of policies and designed procedures aimed at assisting in the elimination of discrimination against women and other minorities in the human society, together with redressing the possibilities of past discrimination. As required by the Affirmative Action Plan's requirements, Affirmative Action was signed by President Johnson in 1965. It supported and revised by different presidents in the world. The intention of Affirmative Action is to have
Affirmative Action Lit Review Affirmative Action Review of Literature Has Affirmative Action outlived its use in today's society? And if so should the program change or simply come to an end? The issue of Affirmative Action (AA) is one that is currently being hotly debated by both policy makers and the public. Like racism itself there are many opinions all of which are run the gamut between logical and illogical and constructive and
Many federal courts have held that community law enforcement agencies may adhere to the stipulations of the Equal Protection Clause if an organizational need validates the employer's intentional affirmative action labors. In the arena of higher education, the Supreme Court has held in Grutter v. Bollinger that having an assorted student body can often account for the consideration of race as an issue in precise admissions results at colleges
..aims to compensate people for past discrimination and its effects. A main effect of past discrimination is current competitive disadvantage; affirmative action gives victims a competitive advantage to compensate for this injury." (1998) the Discrimination-blocking affirmative action according to Anderson: "...aims to block current discriminatory mechanisms by imposing a countervailing force in the opposite direction. It doesn't remove the factors -- prejudice, stereotypes, stigma, intergroup anxiety -- that cause discrimination;
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