Affirmative Action
RESEARCH PAPER
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
INTRODUCTION Affirmative Action is an employment legislation protection system that is intended to address the systemized discrimination faced by women and minorities. It achieves this by enforcing diversity through operational intrusions into recruitment, selection, and other personnel functions and practices in America. Originally, Affirmative Action arose because of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s desire to integrate society on educational, employment, and economic levels, yet it was John F. Kennedy who issued Executive Order 10925 to create the Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, a commission that evolved into our modern Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which is designated to comply with the non-discriminative laws in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. PREFACE In a speech to the graduating class at Howard University on June 4, 1965, President Johnson explains the concept he felt to be underlying in affirmative action, asserting that civil rights laws alone are not enough to remedy discrimination: "You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: 'now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. ' You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, 'you are free to compete with all the others, ' and still justly believe you have been completely fair. This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity—not just legal equity but human ability—not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as result.”[1]
REVIEW OF LITERATURE An important focus of Affirmative Action is statistical under representation of different racial and ethnic groups on college and university campuses. In compliance with AA, if the percentages of minorities are
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
INTRODUCTION Affirmative Action is an employment legislation protection system that is intended to address the systemized discrimination faced by women and minorities. It achieves this by enforcing diversity through operational intrusions into recruitment, selection, and other personnel functions and practices in America. Originally, Affirmative Action arose because of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s desire to integrate society on educational, employment, and economic levels, yet it was John F. Kennedy who issued Executive Order 10925 to create the Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, a commission that evolved into our modern Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which is designated to comply with the non-discriminative laws in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. PREFACE In a speech to the graduating class at Howard University on June 4, 1965, President Johnson explains the concept he felt to be underlying in affirmative action, asserting that civil rights laws alone are not enough to remedy discrimination: "You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: 'now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. ' You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, 'you are free to compete with all the others, ' and still justly believe you have been completely fair. This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity—not just legal equity but human ability—not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as result.”[1]
REVIEW OF LITERATURE An important focus of Affirmative Action is statistical under representation of different racial and ethnic groups on college and university campuses. In compliance with AA, if the percentages of minorities are
Cited: Fields, Cheryl and Sandra Day O’Connor. “ Affirmative Action.” Change 37, no.5 (2005, accessed 11 April 2008); available from www.EBSCOhost.edu; Internet. Rice, Mitchell F. Diversity and Public Administration: Theory Issues, and Perspectives. New York: M.E.Sharpe, 1995. Stephens, Ross G. and Nelson Wikstrom. American Intergovernmental Relations: A Fragmented Federal Polity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Taylor, Ula. “Proposition 209 and the Affirmative Action Debate on the University of California campuses.” Feminist Studies 25, no.1 (1999, accessed 11 April 2008); available from www.EBSCOhost.edu; Internet. [2] Taylor, Ula. “Proposition 209 and the affirmative action debate on the University of California campuses,” Feminist Studies 25 no. 1 (1999, accessed on 11 April 2008); available at www.EBSCOhost.edu. [3] G. Ross Stephens and Nelson Wikstrom, American Intergovernmental Relations: A Fragmented Federal Polity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) , 134-135.