Need For Affirmative Action

3 Pages 823 Words

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 quota of minority employee’s as well as students that an employer or academic school must employ or admit. By imposing a quota system, doors and opportunities opened to minority workers and students that had previously been closed. Therefore, minorities were given a foot into an otherwise closed door. While the government opened the door, it was up to the individual to succeed on his or her own. A 1995 study conducted by Rutgers professor, Alfred Blumrosen, shows that five million minority workers have better jobs today then they would have had without affirmative action. Since the adoption of these laws, minority enrollment at Ivy League Colleges has risen from one percent to more than five percent. Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964,...