Affirmative Action
Affirmative action was created in an effort to help minorities leap the discriminative barriers that were ever so present when the bill was first enacted, in 1965. At this time, the country was in the wake of nation-wide civil rights demonstrations, and racial tension was at an all time high. White males occupied most of the corporate, executive, and managerial positions that controlled the hiring and firing of employees. The U.S. Government, in 1965, believed that these employers were discriminating against minorities, and believed that there was no better time than the present to bring about change. When the Civil Rights Law passed, minorities believed that they should receive retribution for the earlier years of discrimination they endured. The government responded by passing laws to aid them in attaining better employment and education as reprieve for the previous two hundred years of suffering their race endured at the hands of the white man. This is known today as affirmative action. Affirmative action was supposed to be the solution. What originally started out as a good plan would later become a case of reverse discrimination. The affirmative action program consisted of a
Crosby, Faye and Cheryl Vandeveer. Sex, Race, and Merit: Debating Affirmative Action in Education and Employment. Michigan: U of Michigan Press, 2000. "Affirmative Action at the University of California at Berkeley" Online. October 28 1996. http://pwa.acusd.edu/~e_cook/ucb-95.html Colleges were also placed under the quota policy. Just as a white male employee needs more credentials to get a job, a white male student needs more or better skills to be accepted at a prestigious university than a minority student. A perfect example of this can be found at the University of California at Berkeley's web site. A 1995 report released by the university said that ten percent of all excepted applicants were African Americans. Less than one percent of these African American students were accepted by academic criteria alone. Thirty-seven percent of the accepted applicants were white. Of these accepted white students, forty-eight percent were accepted on academic criteria alone. Proportionally, sixty times more African American students were accepted due to non-academic influences than white students. Altschiller, Donald Ed. Affirmative Action. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1991.
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Approximate Word count = 936
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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