AFFIRMITIVE POLICIES AND PRACTICE

Affirmative Policies and Practice

Affirmative Policies and Practice

Introduction

Arguments for or against affirmative action have been based on differing interpretations of its meaning. According to Earl G. Graves, founder and publisher of Black Enterprise magazine, affirmative action has the following characteristics: (a) It does not include all people, (b) it focuses on specific targeted groups, and (c) it is geared toward compliance. These three components are transient across the multiple domains of research wherein affirmative action is discussed and employed. Critics, however, have characterized affirmative action in the context of civil rights enforcement as lacking clarity, careful planning, and analysis.

Affirmative action has been the major strategy effectively used by the federal government to introduce cultural diversity into the U.S. workforce and institutions of higher education. Thus, much of the diversity that exists in the workforce today would not exist without the compliance requirements associated with affirmative action influencing every facet of society—education, housing, health care, economics, and employment—inclusive of and beyond those benefits historically associated with African Americans (Terry, 2004).

Definition

The term affirmative action refers to a social justice effort initiated by the U.S. government and authorized by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It originated in response to inequalities in hiring practices by civilian businesses with government contracts.

History

In its original sense, affirmative action meant taking active steps to ensure nondiscrimination. The phrase affirmative action was first used in an executive order by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, directing federal contractors to employ applicants without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin. In this context, affirmative action simply meant that employers had not merely a “negative” duty not to discriminate but also a positive (affirmative) duty to take steps (action) to ensure that members of traditionally excluded groups—particularly African Americans—did not face discrimination in hiring or in the terms of their employment.

In subsequent years, as the federal government sought to enforce antidiscrimination policies, especially after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, affirmative action took the form of goals and timetables to achieve representation of certain groups in rough proportion to their presence in the labor market. Such numerical goals, it was argued, provided the only way to know whether employers were fulfilling their legal duty to employ qualified members of minority groups.

These policies were immediately controversial. To its supporters, affirmative action represented the logical extension of the Civil Rights Movement, which, in their view, sought to end the second-class citizenship of African Americans (and, by extension, other traditionally disadvantaged groups). They saw affirmative action as necessary to achieve the full and equal participation of all citizens in the major institutions of society. To its critics, affirmative action policies betrayed American ideals and the ideals of the civil rights movement. In their view, the movement aimed at ending the use of race to discriminate and sought to establish a color-blind society in which people are judged by their individual characteristics, not their group membership. In subsequent decades, the debate over affirmative action has involved the elaboration ...