Affirmative action in the US

Thèmes abordés

United States - affirmative action - discrimination - employment, education and business - Black community - Civil Rights Act - Florida - Washington - Nebraska

Résumé du document

Introduction:
In the United States, affirmative action refers to policies intended to redress the effect of past and current discrimination on gender, race or ethnicity. These policies have consisted in granting preferences to women and minorities in areas of employment, education and business.

1- History:
Affirmative action was first conceived for the Black community.
In march 1961; president Kennedy introduced the term in his Executive Order. He settled an affirmative action program, which had to ensure that employees wouldn't be treated with regard to their race, religion, colour or national origin.

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act forbade any kind of discriminations in hiring at work or at school. Moreover, affirmative action changes up in helping people issued from minorities, on top of forbidding discriminations.

In 1967, President Johnson included gender discriminations in the affirmative action plan. He insisted on the fact that the US government must provide equal opportunity in Federal employment on the basis of merit and without any kind of discrimination.

Extraits

[...] It required all contractors working on large federally funded projects to adopt “numerical goals” to assure the desegregation of their workforces - Affirmative action today: After several years of affirmative action, we can look at the results Pros We will mention 3 points that are in favor of affirmative action: - It promotes equal opportunities: it allows indeed minorities to get a job or a formation that they perhaps never could have because they have on average harder living conditions and lower incomes than the rest of the population. So it allows Blacks or Hispanics to be better integrated in the society. - Repairs some injustices of the past: the black community has been segregated until the 60's. Because of that, Black people weren't as well integrated as White people. So affirmative action was a way to rapidly cut the social gap between Blacks and Whites. [...]

[...] - It makes universities and businesses accept less qualified candidates: it lows the standards and sometimes people who benefit of affirmative action don't have an adequate standard. - It creates a dependence on public assistance: people who can benefit of affirmative action could tend to make less individual efforts. - Some studies show that Affirmative action works best for minorities who were already from middle-class backgrounds - Is affirmative action still needed? Thanks to affirmative action, the integration of women and minorities in the society has improved since the 1960's. [...]

[...] Affirmative action has gone on 2010 ballot. Arizonans will have to choose between being the 9th state to stop affirmative action programs or continuing them. The end of affirmative action wouldn't mean necessarily that these programs were unfair, it may also mean that people think that affirmative action is no more needed in 2010. As we saw in the presentation, affirmative action is a controversial issue in the US. It has been defended in name of justice and attacked in name of equality. [...]

[...] Thus, in the 1990's, women were only earning 72% of men's salaries and it was the same for black men who were only earning 79% of white men holding jobs at comparable levels. For the moment, Obama still believes in affirmative action, but he wants to change it. He thinks indeed that we should look at the whole person and not only the colour of the skin or the gender. In outline, he wants to include economic resources in the Affirmative action program. Conclusion: So affirmative action has been banned in 9 states since 1996 (in order: California, Florida, Washington, Nebraska, Texas, Mississipi, Louisiana and Arizona). [...]

[...] History: Affirmative action was first conceived for the Black community. In March 1961; President Kennedy introduced the term in his Executive Order. He settled an affirmative action program, which had to ensure that employees wouldn't be treated with regard to their race, religion, colour or national origin. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act forbade any kind of discriminations in hiring at work or at school. Moreover, affirmative action changes up in helping people issued from minorities, on top of forbidding discriminations. [...]