Affirmative action is a policy or a program that seeks to redress past discrimination of minorities through active measures in order to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment. In other words, it is policy that was established to hopefully eliminate racial preference and equalize the United States. The fight against discrimination has been a long lasting one that started with the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, which ended in the desegregation of all schools (Ficker). Affirmative action was put into place in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Executive Order that mandated government contractors to “take affirmative action” in all aspects of hiring and employing minorities (Brunner). Upon its arrival, the policy The Supreme Court ruling was in favor of the University of Michigan with a final vote count of five to four. “The Supreme Court ruled that although affirmative action was no longer justified as a way of redressing past oppression and injustice, it promoted a "compelling state interest" in diversity at all levels of society” (Brunner). The fact of the matter is that colleges and universities are in strong belief that diversity is an important part of education. It is for this reason that these students are getting accepted, not because of affirmative action. There are many minority students that would get accepted without affirmative action, but unfortunately the number of these students is not large enough to diversify a university. This is the reason students who may seem “under qualified” are getting accepted. As said before, affirmative action policies are merely to even the playing field and give every student the chance to reach their full potential. Universities have realized that the United States is a very diverse nation, and in order to prepare all of their students for the “real world,” diversity is necessary. David Sacks and Peter Thiel state, “[O]riginally conceived as a means to redress discrimination, racial preferences have instead promoted it,” and this is their main argument in A Case Against Affirmative Action. They argue that, by discriminating against white people, it
Anna Pepper 5/14/2013 Period 2 Essay #1 “Affirmative Action” In the “Pros and Cons of Affirmative Action Handout”, affirmative action was defined as “a catch-phrase for various measures that propose to address and rectify the pervasive, systematic discrimination experienced by people of color and women through facilitating, encouraging, or, rarely, compelling their inclusion in the mainstream of society.” The idea itself is very logical and politically correct…
BAM 411 Human Resource Management Text: A Framework for Human Resource Management ISBN-13: 978-0-13-257614-7 Author(s): Gary Dessler Publisher: Pearson 925 North Spurgeon Street, Santa Ana, CA 92701 Phone: 714-547-9625 Fax: 714-547-5777 www.calcoast.edu 10/14 Study Guide Seventh Edition, 2013 BAM 411 Human Resource Management Message From the President W elcome to California Coast University. I hope you will find this course interesting and useful throughout your career. This course…