Affirmative Action Laws



Should Affirmative Action Laws be changed?

Introduction

This paper intends to expound the statement that affirmative action laws should be changed or not. Moreover, this paper will be a great source of information which will describe the definition of affirmative action laws, advantages, challenges, and proposed solutions. The study will highlight three problems pertinent to the affirmative action laws with their solutions. The affirmative action laws are the set of policies that are established to address the issue of discrimination against the race, color, religion, sex, and national origin (Anderson et al., 2008). These policies take into the consideration such discrimination which are commonly associated with the underrepresented groups in the areas of education, employment, and businesses. In short, the affirmative action laws are designed to remedy the discriminatory practices through taking the positive steps in order to exterminate the prevailing concerns of discriminations. At the same time, it aims to create the systems and procedures to avert the practice of discrimination in the future. It is considered as the federal agenda that primarily designed to counteract the discrimination whereby the federal statutes on the affirmative action were introduced in 1961 (Hill and Hill, 2005).

Discussion

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy introduced the statutes on affirmative action in order to ensure the equality. The affirmative action laws can be described as the positive steps which the federal government takes to safeguard the rights of minorities and unrepresented groups in the society. These steps attempt to increase the representation of minorities and especially women in the areas of employment and education. It specifically includes the areas from which these groups have always been excluded historically. These action laws defend the problems pertinent to economic, social, political, environmental, ethical, and moral issues (Fullinwider, 2009). The prime considerations of affirmative action laws are to preserve the civil rights as the discrimination is the widely practiced problem where the individual are treated differently due to their belongingness with the particular group or the categories in the society. There are found to be three fundamental causes of discrimination which are psychological, social, and historical reasons. Whereas, psychologically, the people are involved in the discrimination practice unintentionally due to their subconscious reactions to the race, likes, preferences, and moral values. For instance, this is the reason why white males prefer to work with white in the workplaces as because they like the company of the people who are like them (Bergman, 1996). However, on the other hand, the stereotyping is also another social phenomenon which is accountable for the discrimination as people usually label other due to their color or anything. This causes to discriminate against other people.

There are numerous discrimination related problems which the affirmative action laws attempt to address. The moral issues include the concerns where the affirmative action attempts to bring up the image of particular underrepresented racial or sex groups in the areas of education and work. The moral issues describe that there are a lot of people who have to ...