Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action

Introduction

Affirmative action has long been an issue of contentious debate in America. Since its inception during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, affirmative action, as a policy, has engendered vigorous and at times vitriolic debate. However, recently, it appears that public opinion on the subject may be converging. A recent survey that resulted from interviews of a nationwide sample of more than 2,000 adults indicates that support for affirmative action programs designed to improve minority employment outcomes has improved steadily in recent years, rising from 58% in 1995 to a new high of 70% in 2007. While this survey result indicates what seems to be a solidifying of popular support for affirmative action programs, the fact remains that an increasing number of states are choosing to ban affirmative action programs. First in California, and more recently in Washington State, voters have voted to ban affirmative action programs at the state level. This is a surprising occurrence given the high level of national support for these programs. Regardless of the explanation for this conundrum, it is clear that voters and policymakers will be forced to make important decisions regarding the future of affirmative action programs in America relatively soon. In order to make informed decisions as to the worthiness of these programs, it is essential that decision makers understand these programs' effects. Therefore, all the issues and aspects related to Affirmative Action will be discussed in detail.

Overview of Affirmative Action

Advocates of affirmative action policies believe that minority employees live and work on an unequal playing field. The body of evidence regarding the existence of racial and gender discrimination in the workplace has grown in recent years. In their survey paper, the researchers Holzer and Neumark in 2000 concluded that the preponderance of evidence suggests that discrimination against minority populations exists. In order to substantiate their contention, the authors rely heavily on studies that utilize the audit methodology from the researchers Bendick, Jackson and Reinoso in 1994, Fix and Struyk in 1994, and Kenny and Wissoker in 1994 to demonstrate that distinct differences in the probability of being hired exist across races that cannot be fully explained by unobserved characteristics or other omitted variables, and thus, support a racial discrimination hypothesis. The audit methodology approach eliminates potential biases by creating matched pairs of job applicants that are identical along all qualifications but are of different ethnicities. The pairs of applicants are then presented to unknowing employers for review. By controlling for all other differences between candidates other than race through the matching process, these studies are essentially randomized experiments and can pinpoint racial discrimination as the primary factor in hiring decisions (Bendick, 2004, 58).

Different factors related to Affirmative Action

If one believes that discrimination truly does exist in the labor market, one could argue that steps should be taken to remediate this inequity. Therefore, advocates for affirmative action who believe in the veracity of the results from the aforementioned studies might contend that society has not made a ...