Affirmative action in the United States
In the United States, affirmative action consists of government-mandated, government-approved, and voluntary private programs granting special consideration to groups considered or classified as historically excluded, specifically racial minorities and women.
[16] Affirmative action currently tends to emphasize not specific quotas but rather "targeted goals" to address past discrimination in a particular institution or in broader society through "good-faith efforts ... to identify, select, and train potentially qualified minorities and women.
[22] Affirmative action policies were developed to address long histories of discrimination faced by minorities and women, which reports suggest produced corresponding unfair advantages for whites and males.
[25] These debates led to federal executive orders requiring non-discrimination in the employment policies of some government agencies and contractors in the 1940s and onward, and to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibited racial discrimination in firms with over 25 employees.
The first federal policy of race-conscious affirmative action was the Revised Philadelphia Plan, implemented in 1969, which required certain government contractors to set "goals and timetables" for integrating and diversifying their workforce.
Affirmative action as a practice was partially upheld by the Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), while the use of racial quotas for college admissions was ruled unconstitutional in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978).
Supporters claim that it promotes equality and representation for groups which are socioeconomically disadvantaged or have faced historical discrimination or oppression and counteracts continuing bias and prejudice against women and minorities.
The committee was disturbed by the state of race relations, and included the evacuation of Americans of Japanese descent during the war "made without a trial or any sort of hearing...Fundamental to our whole system of law is the belief that guilt is personal and not a matter of heredity or association."
The recommendations were radical, calling for federal policies and laws to end racial discrimination and bring about equality: "We can tolerate no restrictions upon the individual which depend upon irrelevant factors such as his race, his color, his religion, or the social position to which he is born."
The plan opposed all segregation in the new post-war Armed Forces: "Nothing could be more tragic for the future attitude of our people, and for the unity of our nation" than a citizens' military that emphasized "class or racial difference.
Truman concluded by saying, "If we wish to inspire the peoples of the world whose freedom is in jeopardy, if we wish to restore hope to those who have already lost their civil liberties, if we wish to fulfill the promise that is ours, we must correct the remaining imperfections in our practice of democracy.
[39] When Eisenhower was elected president in 1952 after defeating Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson, he believed hiring practices and anti-discrimination laws should be decided by the states, although the administration gradually continued to desegregate the Armed Forces and the federal government.
[18]: 51 In the 1960 presidential election, Democratic candidate and eventual winner John F. Kennedy "criticized President Eisenhower for not ending discrimination in federally supported housing" and "advocated a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission".
[18]: 72 Lyndon B. Johnson, the Texas Democrat and Senate Majority Leader from 1955 to 1961, began to consider running for high office, and in doing so showed how his racial views differed from those held by many White Americans in the traditional South.
Philadelphia was selected as the test case because, as Assistant Secretary of Labor Arthur Fletcher explained, "The craft unions and the construction industry are among the most egregious offenders against equal opportunity laws .
In 1987, in Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County, California, 480 U.S. 616, the Supreme Court ruled that sex or race was a factor that could be considered in a pool of qualified candidates by employers.
Additionally, in an indirect manner, the Obama administration aimed to garner support for more federal money and funds to be allocated to financial aid and scholarships to universities and colleges within the United States.
[56] Some individual American states also have orders that prohibit discrimination and outline affirmative action requirements with regard to race, creed, color, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, gender, age, and disability status.
According to a 2010 article by Professor Qin Zhang of Fairfield University, Asians are characterized as one dimensional in having great work ethic and valuing education, but lacking in communication skills and personality.
Several prominent figures in the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, and Thurgood Marshall, have expressed support for affirmative action in some respect.
A 2005 study by Princeton sociologists Thomas J. Espenshade and Chang Y. Chung compared the effects of affirmative action on racial and special groups at three highly selective private research universities.
[129] A 2021 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that the 1998 ban on race-based affirmative action in California public universities led to lower wages for minority applicants and deterred qualified students from applying, which it stated was inconsistent with the mismatch effect.
[134] Critics of affirmative action assert that while supporters define diversity as "heterogeneous in meaningful ways, for example, in skill set, education, work experiences, perspectives on a problem, cultural orientation, and so forth", the implementation is often solely based on superficial factors including gender, race and country of origin.
He believed that the "minor fraction of the student body"—up to two dozen in the class entering that year—with "prior educational deficiencies" was not likely to damage the school, and expected that the number of "well prepared" black applicants would greatly increase in the future.
[125] Sander helped to develop a socioeconomically based affirmative action plan for the UCLA School of Law after the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, which prohibited the use of racial preferences by public universities in California.
[151] A 2020 study by UC Berkeley Center Studies in Higher Education researcher Zachary Bleemer on the impact of California's ban on affirmative action on student outcomes using a difference-in-difference research design and a newly constructed longitudinal database linking all 1994–2002 University of California applicants to their college enrollment, course performance, major choice, degree attainment, and wages into their mid-30s found "the first causal evidence that banning affirmative action exacerbates socioeconomic inequities.
[153] The for-profit schools that had high enrollments of underrepresented minority students after state-level affirmative action bans in this study were also subsequently involved in lawsuits for predatory and illegal recruitment practices.
[161] Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated.
[172] Yale has issued a statement viewing the allegation as "baseless" and "rushed" and "will not change its admissions processes in response to today's letter because the DOJ is seeking to impose a standard that is inconsistent with existing law".
This has prompted for high-profile lawsuits and Supreme Court rulings based on arguments of reverse racism or discrimination that prevents admissions to "more qualified" white students to take place.
