Affirmative Action was started to eliminate discrimination in the workplace by h

iring workers on a nondiscriminatory basis. It began in 1961 by president Kenne

dy when he issued executive order number 10925 to make federal contractors take
affirmative action(Altschiller, p.5). The goal of affirmative action is to allo
w "the victims of discriminatory conduct to the position they would have occupie
d in the absence of that conduct" Rehnquist said. Should such policies be legal
and deemed as good or looked down upon as a failed attempt to solve our racial
problems? Affirmative action does not eliminate discrimination if anything it m
akes it more of an issue.
Although the concept of affirmative action is good, the result of it on
whites has been bad. In a survey in 1984, one out of ten white males claimed to
have personally felt reverse discrimination. Reverse discrimination is the ter
m being used to describe discrimination towards whites. Many of these reverse di
scrimination cases have been brought to court, the result is just more confusion
. This is because there is a lot of gray in the law concerning this topic. Som
etimes courts allow someone to choose the minority if they are less qualified, w
hile in other cases they don't allow it. For example in a supreme court decisio
n, it was allowed for a Michigan school district to layoff non-minority teachers
in order to hire minority teachers with less experience(Altschiller, p13). If
a similar case were to appear again the result would most likely be different.
In no case should the person who is less qualified be hired. It also do
esn't make much sense to try to do away with a racial problem by using race as t
he important factor. When it's looked at from the logical point of view most pe
ople do see it as a bad thing. Like when the question "Because of past discrimin
ation, should qualified blacks receive preference over equally qualified whites
in such matters as getting jobs or into colleges or not?" Fifty percent of black
s said they should not. While when the question of whether or not affirmative a
ction is a plus or minus consistently blacks, other minorities, and whites see i
t as a good thing. These two statistics oppose each other. When the actual ter
m affirmative action is used people tend to favor it but, when the concept is br
ought up only half of the minorities favor it. Do people just not know enough a
bout it?
So, affirmative action isn't doing it's job and eliminating discriminati
on. Although it's not that good now, if the courts came to more defiant standar
ds it could improve. For it to work the whole idea has to be looked at from a d
ifferent point of view. To solve the discrimination problem we have to get rid
of it, that means on employment and college application forms we have to get rid
of the race box. Because race shouldn't be a factor. It shouldn't get you a p
osition or lose you a position.
Works Cited
Altschiller, Donald Ed. Affirmative Action New York: The H.W. Wilson Company,199
1.
Carter, Stephen L. Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby Basic Books, New Yo
rk,
New York, 1991.
Hill, Herbert Race, Affirmative Action, and the Constitution McGraw-Hill, Inc.,
1992
Terkel, Struds Race: How Whites and Blacks think and feel about the American obs
ession The New Press, New York 1992.