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Affirmative Action In The Workplace

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Affirmative action can be generally understood as a tool used to redress any kind of discrimination towards the traditionally underrepresented groups of people such as women and African American (The Leadership Conference n.d.). However, it is very difficult to make very clear definition of the term affirmative action, because it is not a single policy, it is rather the combination of the government legislation and court rulings that changes frequently with decisions of governments and courts. In addition to this, affirmative action may be used in different areas such as education, employment and so on (Harry J. Holzer 2000). This essay will mainly focus on the affirmative action at the workplace and education. In these cases affirmative …show more content…

The main critique is that the affirmative action policies can cause reverse discrimination when they benefit minorities at the expense of the majority groups. For the first time the affirmative action was challenged by the US Supreme Court in the Regents Univerity of California in 1978. The university had the affirmative action program that allowed to enroll in each class sixteen “qualified” minority students out of a one hundred class. The white candidate, Allan Bakke, was rejected twice whereas his peer from the minority group was admitted despite he had lower results than Allan Bakke. He maintained that affirmative action policies violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution which says that all citizens should have an equal protection of law. However, the court ruled out that the affirmative action policy is constitutional and can be used as a one of many factors in admissions processes. However, it should not be zero-sum, where the increased opportunities for the minorities come at the expense of the majority groups ( Brunner and Rowen …show more content…

The report made by the Central Foundation says that the racial-based affirmative action programs in the university admissions might disappear very soon. Some states in the USA that used to have affirmative action policies are now banning it because of the voting results, rulings of the Supreme Court and government legislation (Richard D. Kahlenberg, Racial Affirmative Action in Higher Education May Be on Its Way Out 2013). According to the data the racial preferential treatment is not very popular among the voters. Five out of the six states, where the referendum on the anti-racial treatment was held, resulted in banning affirmative action policies towards race. So in 1996 the California state, in 1998 the Washington state , in 2006 the Michigan state, in 2008 the state of Nebraska and more recently in 2010 the Arizona state abandoned the racial preferential treatment. This list is continuing to increase as time passes (Richard D. Kahlenberg, Racial Affirmative Action in Higher Education May Be on Its Way Out 2013). More recently, In February 2014, the Supreme Court supported Michigan law which banned the preferential treatment programs towards race in all public universities and colleges in Michigan ( Brunner and Rowen

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