Affirmative Action Plan
It is a fact that there has been discrimination in employment, where minorities, women, veterans and the disabled are sidelined in favor of the rest of the population. This ought to be provided with equitable access to employment opportunities and this is exactly what affirmative action plan does. By statistical analyses of the demographics, affirmative action programs are able to do away with the negative effects of employment discrimination, in an inclusive manner and without regard to gender, race and disabilities (HRUnlimited, 2018)
Affirmative action is a major concern for many employees. The laws of affirmative action affect all federal government workers, as well as private medium sized to large scale enterprises. Students in institutions of higher education (averaging about 16 million in the U.S.) are also affected by affirmative action laws. Citizens are normally left debating whether affirmative action policies are fair. The US openly claims how fair it is in all its employment deals, but the history proves otherwise. The government has not all along been fair to all individuals, regardless of their gender or ethnicity. Therefore, any law that points to disparity will more than often spark heated debates. The media plays a great role in disseminating information related to affirmative action (Golden, Hinkle & Crosby, 2001).
Confusion regarding what exactly affirmative action is has been witnessed over the past few decades. The proponents and opponents of affirmative action have not been seeing eye to eye. It seems each and every person has differing views on affirmative action. Come to the citizens, many are the ones who know nothing about the basic principles nor the technical mechanics of affirmative action. A recent survey on Chicago citizens showed that 40% of them had this strange idea that affirmative is some kind of a quota system, and these disliked the policy. About half of the sampled population though it to be some kind of monitoring system and so they were for it. Such differences in perception and endorsement have lingered on for decades (Golden, Hinkle & Crosby, 2001).
Despite the numerous Americans affected by affirmative action, the policy is not well explained in high school and college syllabus. It is no wander that many graduates cannot comfortably define affirmative action. 1995 was the year when the then president of the US, Bill Clinton, publicly performed an evaluation of affirmative action. After that, the scholars in the nation did a count of the articles on that topic published in the mainstream media, namely The Washington Post, USA Today and The New York Times. This was done over a period of three months: June, July and August. Of the total 176 counted, less than 10 of the articles clearly defined affirmative action. It seems the authors were reporting on a topic they didn’t have a good depth of knowledge about (Crosby & Cordova, 1996).
The need for affirmative action
Considering costs, affirmative action is on the higher side compared to equal opportunity. Affirmative action has been known to breed criticism like no other policy. This has a negative effect on those it should benefit, simply because of the numerous questions on its merits. Those individuals who cannot be classed as minorities do not see the benefit of affirmative action. On the other hand, those who place themselves in the minority group endorse affirmative action with all their might (Crosby & Konrad, 2002).
So, the question remains: Is affirmative action really necessary? Of what use is a policy that greatly burdens organizations in the name of assuring fairness? Being a proactive policy, how will you ever convince an organization to abandon the less costly reactive policies? Social psychologists have the best answers to these questions. A team of psychologists back in the year 1982 came up with this theory referred to as “the denial of personal discrimination”. This is where an individual, distances himself, from the discrimination that other people in his social group face. Take for instance colored people within a dominantly white locality. Most of the blacks may fear and actually experience discrimination when it comes to searching for jobs, or even accessing vital facilities such as health care facilities. Despite all this, you may find that one colored person who rides above his racial orientation, believes in himself and accesses anything he wants,...
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