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Affirmative Action
Affirmative action is a touchy subject to many people regardless of their race, nationality, gender or religion. Affirmative action is accomplished by taking positive steps to recruit, hire, train, and promote individuals from groups that have traditionally been discriminated against on the basis of race, sex, disability, or other characteristics. In this sense, affirmative action goes beyond equal employment opportunity, which requires employers to eliminate discriminatory conditions, whether inadvertent or intentional, and to treat all employees equally in the workplace. Affirmative action requirements can be imposed on an employer in a number of ways: by federal law, for federal government contractors and subcontractors; as part of a conciliation agreement with a state or federal agency; or by court order. In addition, some employers voluntarily adopt affirmative action plans in an effort to create a more balanced workforce.
Affirmative action programs have risen as a result of executive orders, legislation, consent decrees stemming from government investigations, court-ordered remedies, and voluntary action by corporations and other non-public institutions.
“Affirmative action is an attempt to redistribute economic power by forcing employers to give preference to women. As with all schemes of distributing justice, choice is taken from individuals and given to social planners. Affirmative action has been a debacle. It has not cured sex segregation in the work place or closed the wage gap between men and women. More importantly, it has hindered the institution that has done the most to benefit women economically: the free market.” (“McElroy”, 2003)
In work and schools many employers and university officials have placed the idea of diversity, rather than the moral imperative of anti-discrimination, at the center of their arguments for affirmative action. For some, achieving greater diversity is a way of enabling organizations such as police departments, colleges, and corporations to perform their missions better. For others, diversity is a good to be promoted in the service of ideals such as community solidarity and integration.
Some of the problems faced are that affirmative action can call for an admissions officer faced with two similarly qualified applicants to choose the minority over the white, or for a manager to recruit and hire a qualified woman for a job instead of a man. Affirmative action decisions are generally not supposed to be based on quotas, nor are they supposed to give any preference to unqualified candidates. And they are not supposed to harm anyone through so called ”reverse discrimination."
Works Cited
McElroy, Wendy: What does Affirmative action affirm?
Retrieved July 27, 2003 from the World Wide Web:
http://www.zetetics.com/mac/affirm.htm