Contemporary issues related to racism in American society: Debate on Affirmative Action

Contemporary issues related to racism in American society: Debate on Affirmative Action

Introduction

The objective of this assignment is to present critical position on the contemporary issues that are associated to the racism in the American society. This issue can be raise through the exploration of debates by opposing different legislative cases of Affirmative Action in the United States. The support and arguments are simultaneously discussed with different examples that include Civil Rights Act of 1964, Wanger Act of 935, Plessy v Ferguson 1986 and other legislative actions to comment on fair employment practices, women empowerment, and equal employment opportunities.

There are various questions that can be addressed to define affirmative action as a remedy against racism. This is a critical and difficult question as both affirmative action and racism lead to highly emotional, academic, and political debates that determines the possibility and impossibility for engagement in the discussion between opponents. The contested issues between affirmative action and racism are explained to understand the contemporary issues of racisms in the American society.

Discussion

Concept of Affirmative Action Legislation

There are many academic researchers and scholars who have interpreted about relationship between affirmative action and racial attitudes as contemporary issues in the United States. These issues and policies are discussed in the light of significant social psychological theories that include social dominance theory, group conflict theory, and social dominance theory (Blanchflower, 2009).

There are many researchers who have created associations with varying practical and ideological factors to attain the victory for their school of thoughts over other thoughts. Many scholars have cautioned about different factors that were varyingly evaluated to contribute for the understanding of why privileged groups support the theory of affirmative action, while others who argue it.

Affirmative Action is a term used commonly in the United States for legal implications of equal employment opportunity measures. These measures are those that Federal contractors as well as subcontractors in the US are required to adopt. The main aim of such measures is to ensure that employees in the workplace do not face any form of discrimination, may it be sexual, racial, cultural or national. Affirmative action in the USA, as offered by the Department of Labor, incorporates campaigns for outreach, employee development, management development, targeted recruitment as well as support programs (Colamery, 1998).

Diversity Management

Over time, affirmative action has been cited to be one of the various ways of managing diversity. Diversity management refers to ensuring that the workforce contains employees from all genders, races, ethnicities, nationalities, religion, etc. Since diversity refers to the minimization of factors that impede multiculturalism, any effort undertaken to benefit groups that have been ignored leads to an indirect reinforcement of a diverse workforce.

Equal Opportunity Employment

Every time an organization allocates resources including money and time to ensure the eradication of gender-based or ethnicity-based discrimination at the workplace, affirmative action is taking place(Rubio, 2012).

Affirmative action legislation has the same aims as that of EEO (Equal Opportunity Employment), but ...