Affirmative Actions



Affirmative Actions

Introduction

The affirmative action policies have emerged from the 60s, at the height of the struggle of black Americans by the end of legal racial segregation hitherto in force various spheres of social life in the United States. The term affirmative action is attributed to John F. Kennedy, who in Presidential Decree 1961, determined that the contractors of the U.S. government should take affirmative steps towards to ensure access to and presence in the body of employed individuals of different races, creeds and nationalities (Fang, & Moro, 2010). Thereafter, the expression gained more precise content and passed to define the measures aimed at providing access to historically disadvantaged groups to goods scarce and prestigious positions in society.

Discussion

Issues, Challenges and Opportunities

In the United States, they turned mainly to ensuring greater participation of minority groups' labor market, in higher education and in elected government. Primarily aimed at blacks, as direct consequence of the civil rights movement, affirmative action also contemplated women, the disabled, ethnic groups of immigrants, Native Americans, the elderly, and countless other groups. Thus, these actions began to be claimed by several social, that gathering around an identity (be it racial, ethnic or even cultural), came to say that their difference from the dominant groups had become an effective inequality of material and symbolic conditions (Collins, 2011). Now we want to stress that, if considered as a legal mechanism that is differentially those under the law, by virtue of their difference, if in condition of marginalization in a given socio-economic structure, affirmative action have a history before the American experience.

Group's identity

The defense and the public repudiation of the experiences of racial and gender are therefore crucial to advance the achievement of a new set of rights and the restoration of human capacities of women and black men act ...