Affirmative Action Policies - Essay Example

Affirmative Action Policies 2009 Affirmative Action Policies Introduction The issue of interracial relations has always been probably the most controversial and difficult social problems of American society. For much of the last century, racial, gender, ethnic, and religious minorities have been facing legal exclusion and unequal treatment. Representatives of minorities and women were segregated into low paid and less perspective jobs, while some minorities - for example Chinese or Korean, were legally forbidden to own land. Until the second decade of the last century, even white women were legally deprived of the political rights and in many states they could not enter certain occupational fields, such as law, journalism, and medicine. Only in the late decades of the last century the federal government and the Supreme Court, Republicans and Democrats, and various human rights organizations implemented systematic approach to resolve the problem of discrimination in employment and education, but the results were usually inconsiderable. Racial conflicts and discrimination persisted as well as attempts to eliminate them. In the second half of the 20th century the latter were labeled as 'affirmative action' policies. The origins of these policies dates back to 1961, when President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order number 10925 proclaiming the 'affirmative action' policy the central axis of the US employment and educational policies. The Civil Rights Act became the next step toward elimination of discrimination in the United States. After its approval in 1964, the necessity emerged to change a number of traditional policies and official procedures, such as seniority status and aptitude tests, which included discriminatory provisions. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson signed his Executive Order number 11246 stating that all government contractors and subcontractors were obliged "to take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin". The order was immediately followed by a series of lawsuits that supported the policy of affirmative action. Thus, the Supreme Court ruling in Griggs vs. Duke Power Company case invalidated intelligence tests and several other discriminating criteria in employment. The newly created governmental institutions, the Office of Federal Contract, had to implement the order (Encyclopedia Americana, 1985: 241). The contemporary meaning of the term 'affirmative action' has not changed over years. The initial purpose of affirmative action also remained unchanged: elimination of racial, sexual, ethnic, disability, or any other discrimination. In 1996, President William Clinton defined affirmative action as "an effort to develop a systematic approach to open the doors of educational, employment, and business development opportunities to qualified individuals who happen to be members of groups that have experienced long-standing and persistent discrimination" (Clinton, 1996: 131). In the recent years the affirmative programs has become one of the most widely discussed domestic issues in the United States. A number of analysts tend to consider the affirmative action policy a very effective tool that significantly reduced discrimination against non-white and female population of the United States. However, there is also an opinion that the affirmative efforts have been nothing but a great illusion from the very beginning: the positive results were made up to justify huge sums of money spent on implementation of affirmative programs. Although both standpoints have seemingly strong arguments, it will be closer to the truth to state that affirmative action policies largely failed. Main Discussion First of all, there are credible data that demonstrates the increase in well-being of some representatives of racial minorities was achieved not at the expense of the white majority, but at the expense of other representatives of the same minority: "The civil rights movement, anti-discrimination legislation, and affirmative action have produced a substantial African-American middle and upper-middle class, but the disparity between poor and prospering blacks has grown. (The income of the bottom quintile of black families declined by 17 percent between 1973 and 1987, while the top quintile rose by 33 percent.) The policies of the 1980s have resulted in a more segregated society, one less concerned with social justice and integration, one more mean-spirited, self-protective, and edgy about race than it was two decades ago" (Hoffman, 1993: 31). Interesting data is provided in the Affirmative Action Review, precisely in its part 9 dealing with affirmative action policies in the sphere of Federal Procurements and Practices. Thus, during 1980's racial discrimination in this field was observed and in 1987 " only six percent of all firms were owned by minorities; less than two percent of minorities owned businesses while the comparable percentage for nonminorities was over six percent" (USCMBD, 1992: 6). The beginning of 1990's did not significantly change the overall picture: in 1992 the Federal Commission on Minority Business Development reported that "stereotypical images of minority owned firms limit their access to the factors of production . . . Our nation's history has created a 'cycle of negativity' that reinforces prejudice through its very practice; restraints on capital availability lead to failures, in turn, reinforce a prejudicial perception of minority firms as inherently high-risks, thereby reducing access to even more capital and further increasing the risk of failure" (Affirmative Action Review, Part 9: 140). The economic status of male and female employees in the middle of eighties also proves that affirmative action programs were mostly ineffective. Composing approximately forty percent of the US labor force in 1960 women earned two thousand dollars less than men with the same qualification, skills and experience. The Civil Act of the Congress and Executive orders of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson appeared to bring absolutely no effect to this field, rather on the contrary: by middle of seventies the gap between male and female earnings even increased to five thousand dollars. Education and office of woman did not play important role: calculation demonstrated that female employee with college education in the middle of eighties earned less than half the salary of male employee with the same qualification, office, experience and skills. Moreover, college educated female specialist earned fourteen percent less that a man who received only high school education (Encyclopedia Americana, 1985: 545h). Such data exclude any possibility of talking about success or effectiveness of affirmative action policies. The state of things in education is also disappointing: it seems that affirmative action programs rather caused additional troubles and spoiled the stable system than had any positive effect. The initial purpose of affirmative action was to help Afro-Americans recover from centuries of undeserved and cruel discrimination. But those who developed that policy paid little attention to the fact that other racial minorities would also claim for their piece of the pie. That is why affirmative action in education turned out to be a failure and simply " molted into "diversity", the attempt to achieve rainbow representation for its own sake, without any pretense of redress or justice" (Krauthammer, 2001: A3). Affirmative action in education led to one more negative and even dangerous after-effect, which became clear only now. The United States have always been considered an alloy of many peoples, and assimilation was not treated as base, on the contrary it was the aim of many generations of emigrants who wanted to become Americans. Emergence of "multiculturalism" owed a debt to affirmative action policies at educational sphere. The idea itself looks attractive: the United States is a country of many races and ethnical groups; all of them have respect toward each other, but at the same time preserve their own cultural traditions sharing them with their fellow citizens, enriching American culture. Unfortunately multiculturalism led to different results. Afro-Americans took it in the wrong spirit and instead of assimilating into common American culture they became more and more alienated. Such turn of events completely disoriented not only contestants of affirmative action and multiculturalism, but also its proponents, like Arthur Schlesinger. In 1991 he published his book "The Disuniting of America" that became the first alarm signal (Schlesinger, 1998). And the fact that in 1998 we saw a new reduction of this book vividly demonstrated that the situation had not improved, rather on the contrary. Afro-Americans and other ethnical groups raised their claims. For example, the Poles required that any mentioning of holocaust should be accompanied with information about millions of Poles who fell victims to cruelty of Stalin and Hitler. The Armenians insisted upon including into history books the genocide of 1916 (when hundreds thousand Armenians died) and the Turks who were accused of that genocide expressed strong dissent. The whole situation bore much resemblance with a competition: Who suffered more heavily Each ethnical minority at once found an immeasurable number of things to be dissatisfied with: Afro-Americans, Hispanic, Native Americans, women and gays. The only social group that was not allowed to complain consisted of white males who worked and paid taxes (Schlesinger, 1998: 23). Conclusion Effectiveness of any policy is not difficult to estimate when both initial aims and final results are known. Therefore it is possible to conclude that affirmative action policy turned out to be a failure. Firstly, the initial aim of affirmative action was to provide all citizens of the United States with equal opportunities in employment, education, and other spheres of social life. This task remained obviously outstanding: both defendants and agonists of affirmative action policies admit it. Secondly, the seeming success of affirmative action when in 1970 - 1980's the number of students who belonged to racial or national minorities significantly increased, was achieved by reverse discrimination of the white majority: cases of Bakke and Webber in 1970's made authorities accept this fact. Public polls that are usually proved up on that affirmative action is supported by the nation rather demonstrate absence of full understanding of this policy (Schlesinger, 1998). Thirdly, in education affirmative action programs seem to cause more harm than positive effects. Ironically, but sometimes it is not even necessary to have a good knowledge of English to be enrolled to college (Krauthammer, 2001). Do we have right to discuss any positive outcome of affirmative action under such circumstances Clinton's "Mend it, don't end it" policy became the first step toward changes in affirmative action policy; they are likely to become deeper during Bush's Administration. President Bush, for example, urged the Supreme Court "to strike down the race-conscious admissions policies a the University of Michigan" (Liptak, 2003). Instead he proposed to implement another approach to achieve racial and national diversity in education. The proposal was the following: all students who graduated near the top should be allowed to attend universities regardless of their SAT grades. Only time is able to show whether this new approach will be of advantage over previous affirmative action programs that evidently proved their ineffectiveness. References "Affirmative Action", Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. 1, International Edition, 1985 Clinton, W. J. (1996). Between Hope and History. Crown Hoffman, N. (1993). "Shifting Gears: How to Get Results with Affirmative Action". Change, Vol. 25, No.2: pp.30-34 Krauthammer, C. (2001) "Affirmative action has become a naked spoils system". Dallas Morning News, July 15: A3 Liptak, A. (2003). "Bush's Affirmative Action Plan Unlikely to End Debate". The New York Times, January 19: B2 "Prejudice and Discrimination", Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. 18, International Edition, 1985; page 545h Schlesinger, A.M. (1998). The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Revised and Enlarged Edition). W.W. Norton & Co. United States Commission on Minority Business Development (USCMBD) (1992). Final Report. Washington D.C Read More