Affirmative Action Policies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Affirmative Action Policies - Essay Example precisely in the late decades of the last carbon the federal g ein truthwherenment and the Supreme Court, Republicans and Democrats, and various human rights organizations apply overbearing approach to resolve the problem of discrimination in employment and education, scarcely the results were usually inconsiderable. racial conflicts and discrimination persisted as well as attempts to eliminate them. In the second half of the 20th century the latter were labeled as approbatory action policies.The origins of these policies dates back to 1961, when President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order tot up 10925 proclaiming the affirmative action insurance policy the central axis of the US employment and educational policies. The Civil Rights Act became the next step toward ejection of discrimination in the United States. After its approval in 1964, the necessity emerged to change a number of traditional policies and official procedures, such as seniority status and aptitude tests, which included discriminatory provisions. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson signed his Executive Order number 11246 stating that all government contractors and subcontractors were obliged to take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. The order was in a flash followed by a series of lawsuits that supported the policy of affirmative action. Thus, the Supreme Court ruling in Griggs vs. Duke Power Company case invalidated intelligence tests and several other discriminating criteria in employment. The freshly created governmental institutions, the Office of Federal Contract, had to implement the order (Encyclopedia Americana, 1985 241).The contemporary meaning of the term affirmative action has not changed over years. The initial purpose of affirmative action also remained unchanged elimination of racial, sexual, ethnic, disability, or any other discriminati on. In 1996, President William Clinton defined affirmative action as an effort to develop a systematic approach to open the doors of educational, employment, and business development opportunities to qualified individuals who happen to be members of groups that have experienced long-standing and refractory discrimination (Clinton, 1996 131). In the recent years the affirmative programs has become one of the most widely discussed home(prenominal) issues in the United States. A number of analysts tend to consider the affirmative action policy a very effective tool that significantly reduced discrimination against non-white and female population of the United States. However, thither is also an opinion that the affirmative efforts have been nothing but a great illusion from the very beginning the positive results were made up to justify huge sums of money spent on death penalty of affirmative programs. Although both standpoints have seemingly strong arguments, it will be closer to t he truth to resign that affirmative action policies largely failed. Main DiscussionFirst of all, there are credible entropy that demonstrates the increase in well-being of some representatives of racial minorities was achieved not at the expense of the white majority, but at the expense of other representatives of the same minority The civil rights movement, anti-discrimination