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Affirmative Action From before the Civil War until the 1960 s in the United States there was a strong anti-resist movement, aimed to end racial discrimination by all means. In 1964 president Lyndon Johnson made an attempt to deal with the increasing demands of blacks for equal rights, receiving the most comprehensive civil-rights act to date; the act specifically prohibited discrimination in voting, education, and the use of public facilities. For the first time since the Supreme Court prohibited segregation in public schools in 1954, the federal government had a means of enforcing integration. In other words, the major goal of antifascist movement had been achieved, legally race discrimination stopped to exist. However, it did not lead to radical changes in the socio-economic condition of blacks and other minorities. To remedy this condition, blacks began to ask for affirmative action from the part of the government to increase black participation in both economic and social fields of the country.
Therefore, both President Johnson and President Nixon established policies to guarantee that blacks and other minorities would in fact be hired by federal contractors. Thus, various affirmative action programs were issued to insure that blacks and other minorities had access to higher education and employment. These programs tried to encourage the hiring and promotion of minorities and women in order to neutralize past and present discrimination. Affirmative action also included special educational programs and recruitment for minorities. Affirmative action was highly controversial. It had supporters and critics.
What were the arguments in favor and opposed to race-sensitive admissions policies? The government had undertaken the affirmative action as a necessary step to remedy the consequences of the past discrimination against blacks and other minorities. For many years a lot of serious barriers (including legal ones) prevented blacks, hispanics and women from the access to certain kinds of jobs and from having a possibility to get higher education. From the affirmative action advocates point of view, in order to compensate the injustice of the previous years there was a necessity of a very strong decision from the part of government, other then enacting a law against segregation. Giving more opportunities to minorities, and encouraging employers to hire people who for the reason of race had no access to it before, was not a reverse discrimination but a re-establishing of justice.
Supporters affirmed that affirmative action policies were the only way to ensure an integrated society in which all parts of the population have an equal opportunity to share in jobs, education, and other benefits. They argued that numerical goals for hiring, promotions, and college admissions are necessary to integrate fields traditionally closed to women and minorities because of discrimination. Affirmative action caused many debates. Critics declared that giving preferential treatment to people on the base of their origin violated the principle of equality under the law. These critics argued that it was unfair to discriminate against members of one group today to compensate for discrimination against other groups in the past. They considered affirmative action as a form of reverse discrimination that unfairly prevents whites and men from being hired and promoted.
The use of racial quotas as part of affirmative action led to charges of reverse discrimination in the late 1970 s. Then, little by little, by the late 1990 s, all states came to total banishment of race- and sex-based preferences. Was affirmative action necessary to achieve racial equality in the United States? It was no doubt an important step from the part of the government towards eliminating race discrimination.
Despite segregation was legally prohibited, it was not enough to find an equilibrium between the possibilities open to blacks and whites. Despite the supporters of the affirmative action argued that it was a natural way to restore justice, the affirmative action was in fact more like a reverse discrimination, because it seemed like blacks paid whites the same coin. The real justice is when everyone has equal access to any kind of education and any kind of employment, when all people can compete basing on their merits, knowledge and skills, not on their ancestry. Unfortunately, even when segregation in the United States was officially abolished, there did not happen any radical change in achieving equality between all American citizens. Therefore the affirmative action had become a necessary instrument in that period, it had been a great push in the fight against discrimination. There might be different points of view on the affirmative action nowadays, but in the end on 1960 s it helped the society to move from the dead point in providing minorities with the access to the fields of social and economic life of the country that were by different reasons closed for them before.
Bibliography /reference list: Affirmative Action, (2008) retrieved on September 18, 2008, from Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia Web site: web Affirmative Action, (2005) retrieved on September 18, 2008, from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Web site: web Affirmative Action, retrieved on September 19, 2008, from Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia Web site: web The 1964 Civil Rights Act To The Present, (2007) retrieved on September 18, 2008 from The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6 th ed Web site: web
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Research essay sample on Civil Rights Act Affirmative Action
