AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Affirmative Action

Table of Contents

Introduction3

Discussion3

Conclusion10

References12

Affirmative Action

Introduction

The phrase "affirmative action" was first coined in 1961 by Hobart Taylor Jr., a black lawyer working for the administration of President John F. Kennedy (D). Taylor used words in drafting an executive order that created the president's Council on Equal Opportunity, a panel that encouraged federal contractors to voluntarily hire more blacks. (Anderson 2004) Affirmative action is a policy or practice that provides members of minority groups and women greater opportunities in employment, education, housing, and other areas of life. Affirmative action not only forbids employers, landlords, and others from discriminating on the grounds of race, sex, religion, or other factors, but it also aims to actively encourage the recruitment, hiring, and promotion of members minority groups and women. This paper discusses “affirmative action”.

Discussion

Affirmative action is vigorously debated by those who believe the programs should be abolished and those who think they still serve a vital purpose. Affirmative action is a good step towards providing equal opportunities for all U.S. citizens. Affirmative action and equal employment opportunity must be a major consideration in developing and implementing recruitment practices and procedures. The days should be gone when a person can be hired simply because he or she is someone's friend or relative. Physical appearance and the interviewer's “hunch” are also no longer acceptable criteria for hiring or promoting an individual. (Appelt 2000)

Many school districts make a practice of promoting already hired employees into supervisory or managerial positions. A school bus driver could advance to dispatcher and on from there to route supervisor and eventually become director of transportation. A classroom teacher may become a department chairperson and, if certificated as an administrator, an assistant principal with eventual promotion into the principalship. This is, of course, a legitimate practice with many advantages for building morale within the school district. (Beauchamp 2008)

Employees who recognize that the district provides them with an opportunity to advance their careers through promotion to positions of greater responsibility are more likely to make a continuing commitment to the school district. In like manner, employees should also be made aware of the link between job performance and promotion. This places a responsibility on the administration to develop procedures that ensure promotion opportunities for those who have demonstrated on the job that they are capable of handling higher-level tasks. The appraisal process is the vehicle for documenting the quality of such performance.

Section One presented in detail the affirmative action and equal employment opportunity requirements mandated by various civil rights legislation. This legislation basically prohibits discrimination in recruitment because of race, age, disability, military service, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, and national origin. The concept of equality in opportunity, however, must eventuate in a set of recruitment procedures. (Beckwith 2007)

Internal promotion as a practice does not nullify affirmative action requirements. The only exceptions to such requirements are those situations in which sex, not being disabled, etc., constitute bona fide occupational qualifications. Thus, a school district may discriminate against a teacher's aid ...