Free Essays on Affirmative Action

There are many issues in today’s society that have two solid sides to them, sides, or positions, that cannot be proven absolutely wrong or right. Issues such as capital punishment, abortion, labor unions, animal rights and the list goes on and on. But one issue of this sort haunts our schools, our industries, and the subject, or core, of the issue has haunted our country for the last century. The subject of race, and the issue of affirmative action. In the case of affirmative action, like other controversial issues, each side is strongly supported and neither side can be proven right or proven wrong. The supporters claim it is the best way to ensure equal opportunity in the schools and in the workplace, while those opposing it claim that it merely takes away opportunity from one race, and unjustly hands it to another. The side of this fine line that will be exploited in the following paragraphs is the side opposing affirmative action. The results of affirmative action are more harmful than helpful because it negatively affects the general public, denies opportunity to the deserving, and is an abuse of law and power by government. First, affirmative action negatively affects the public by setting quotas and standards in fields of life that race should have no preference to. For example: colleges and universities. Standards should not be set on which percentage of which race should attend a college or university. An Ivy League school shouldn’t be required to have a percentage of students of each race and nationality. They should be allowed to enroll whom they feel best suits the educational requirements needed to be successful at the school. When standards are in effect students, who were accepted as a result of affirmative action, may find they cannot meet the educational requirements at the school and fail out. This in turn will more than likely either waste a years worth of work, and the individual will just attend another univer... Free Essays on Affirmative Action Free Essays on Affirmative Action Considering the subject of affirmative action the following questions frequently are raised: Is there a clear understanding of affirmative action roles/goals? What are the pros/cons of these programs? What are the "loop holes" in the system? Does seniority play a role in affirmative action? Addressing these key questions may help us all in our daily routine, as administrators and/or potential administrator in the public/private sector. Affirmative action programs throughout the United States have long been a controversial issue particularly concerning employment practices (public/private) and university student and/or staff recruitment. Most public agencies have some type of instituted affirmative action program. According to Cheryl Perry-League, Director of Equal Opportunity of the Port of Oakland, every business operating on Port of Oakland owned land must have a standing affirmative action program on record and businesses bidding to do work for the Port of Oakland must have an acc eptably diverse workforce. BACKGROUND To understand the role and/or goals of affirmative actions programs we should define what the broad definition of what affirmative action is and what caused its development. The phase "affirmative action" was used in a racial discrimination context. Executive Order No. 10,925 issued by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. The order indicated that federal contractors should take affirmative action to ensure job applicants and employees are treated "without regard to their race, creed, or national origin." A person could define this statement as an order to imply equal access and nothing else. Subsequently, Executive Order 11246 issued by President Johnson in September 1965, "mandated affirmative action goals for all federally funded programs and moved monitoring and enforcement of affirmative action programs out of the White House and into the Labor Department." Affirmative action "refers to various efforts to deliberately ... Free Essays on Affirmative Action Discrimination is part of history, part of everyday life, and part of every single person in this country. Affirmative action is necessary in today’s American society to counteract the effects of past discrimination, and to help exterminate future tribulations. Although geared towards minorities, in a world dominated by white male’s affirmative action plays a major role in the elimination of prejudice against women and minorities alike. Established in 1964, as part of the Civil Rights Act, affirmative action was a huge step in American recovery from a Horrible past. A commission to enforce affirmative action was not put into order until years later. The Equal Employment Opportunities act was established in 1972, to enforce what was or other wise just an idea put on paper. ( The Columbia Encyclopedia, 659). Throughout the 70’s there were a few cases pertaining to the quotas being used, and their tendency of â€Å"reverse discrimination†. (The Columbia Encyclopedia, 659) The dispute of reverse discrimination was acknowledged in certain cases, but most programs kept their existing policies. A case in 1979 sought out and achieved approval of quotas to be used in private businesses and unions using affirmative action. Affirmative action was broken down and rebuilt multiple times throughout the late 70’s and 80’s. In the 90’s, with the help of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, affirmative action was now a solid policy for the first time in 20 years. (The Columbia Encyclopedia, 659) However, in 1995, the policy was run through the gamut once more, and restrictions were placed on the use of race when pertaining to government contracts. In 1995 using quotas was ruled illegal by the supreme court. Once more put through test of time, the late 90’s brought change again. The government programs previously affected by the 1995 make over, were now molded to aid anyone who is â€Å"socially disadvantaged.†( The Columbia Enc... Free Essays on Affirmative Action Affirmative action was created because of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s to increase diversity in America’s workplace. Since then, there has been plenty of controversy surrounding it. Today, affirmative action programs have become more of a discriminatory system which gives less qualified applicants an edge on sex and skin color and nothing else. These programs have evolved to be less about civil rights to become more of a stepping stool. They also have added an increase of tension between all races. Activists have complained about companies having quotas for minorities and women so they can have a certain percentage of their working population. Since this does not have an emphasis on people that are the best for the job, this can be detrimental to the operation of the job market. Affirmative action promotes the hiring of less skilled workers. It sometimes forces employers to choose the best worker, which is in the minority, they can find, regardless of whether they have the required job skills. For example, most universities and colleges have quotas for how many minority students they want or should enroll to the freshman class. Some people call the Affirmative Action Act â€Å"reverse discrimination†, but the act can be discrimination within itself. Reverse discrimination basically implies that we are discriminating against the â€Å"majority† instead of the usual â€Å"minority.† The Civil Rights Act was created to have employers to consider applicants objectively in filling jobs within their companies. This was highly needed years ago, today, people overall are more educated then before. We should not have to help people who are not truly struggling from this at the expense of people who are qualified. Affirmative action is based on race and sex; it is not accurately based for measuring those who are most in need. By lowering the bar of admissions to universities and the work force, we are promoting and ensuring ... Free Essays on Affirmative Action When people talk about the civil rights movement, the first thing that comes to mind is the famous speech â€Å"I have a dream† by Martin Luther King. His dream in short was to have equality among human beings. For the past thirty years, this country has been revolutionizing humanitarianism because there is greater concern for human welfare than one hundred years ago. The revolution began during the 1960’s, and during that era this county was drastically involved in changing the civil rights of minority groups. From this concern, a program called affirmative action evolved. Like other civil right movements, the affirmative action movement was implemented to promote equality. Affirmative action is an attempt by the Unites States to amend a long history of racial discrimination and injustice. According to The American Heritage College Dictionary, the term affirmative action refers to a policy or program that seeks to redress past discrimination by increasing opportunities for underrepresented groups. Since this was such a controversial subject, the program brought out two opposing sides that seemed to have reasonable explanations for both supporting and opposing the issue. The people that support affirmative action, argue that this advantage for people of color is needed because of the fact that how badly black people were discriminated against. Besides, they claim that because of the discrimination that once was, these people are at a disadvantage, and always have been, therefore equality of opportunity is needed. On the other hand, people that oppose this issue claim that the battle for equal rights is over, and that this advantage made for people of color discriminates against people that are not of color. As for myself, my opinion about this issue seems to be twisted. I believe that our county needed some kind of a law that would provide relief and equal opportunities to minorities that were discriminated against. Howe... Free Essays on Affirmative Action Stereotyping and the Media Stereotypes are a huge problem in today’s society, and can result in predjudice, mistreatment, and discrimination amongst people of all races, religions, and beliefs. Everyone seems to rely on stereotypes in some way, usually to describe differences between groups and to predict how others will behave. Problems with stereotyping include overgeralization, seeing what we already believe, avoiding power sharing, and to justify hostility. In order to change a stereotype held on specific people or groups of people, you must actually get to know those people you hold stereotypes on. This may confirm the stereotype, or be the exposure you need to correct your false data. The media seems to take in those stereotypes we hold and use them to their advantage, in my opinion to play on emotions for ratings. In other words, because of popular culture and our own cultural identities, we are drawn to watch television programs that we can relate to in some way, and with this comes creation an d reinforcement of different stereotypes. In my opinion, the media influences our stereotypes by taking the stereotypes we already have on a specific group, and then using those stereotypes with a character in a specific television show. For instance, someone may hold a stereotype on African American females as being loud and obnoxious. The television show â€Å"Martin† features an African American female named Sheneanea. Her character fits that stereotype of African American females perfectly. Sheneanea is loud, obnoxious and as ghetto as the come. If viewers have no contact with African American women other than through television, what choice do they have but to belive that all women of that particular race reflect the television image. Besides, did you know that on average, Americans watch more than 40 hours of television a week (Martin, pg. 166)? Another huge stereotype people hold is against gays and lesbians. The first ste... Free Essays on Affirmative Action The Unites States Constitution, in Amendment XIV, Section 1, states, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (1)" Affirmative action can trace its roots back to the 14th amendment, although it did not really get started until Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, giving minorities equal employment rights. The overall strategy and outline for this plan were contained in Executive Order 11246, which was issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1972 (Gilbert et al. 2). This led to a wave of programs that were intended to further the equal employment opp ortunities for minority individuals. Affirmative action programs were intended to legally require organizations to be diverse. During the 1990's these programs have come under a lot of scrutiny and are being replaced with a concept known as diversity management. . Managing and valuing diversity are key aspects of organizational behavior, but the question lies in how to create the diversity within the organization. In this paper, I will examine several articles that will give us reasons that affirmative action should be replaced by diversity management, as well as one that believes that affirmative action is still needed in today's society. Mary Guy believes that affirmative action programs are still needed today. She noted that if we lived in a perfect world we would not have a need for organizations to have affirmative action programs (240). However, since people have a tendency to work around people that are most like us, programs are needed to ensure that... Free Essays on Affirmative Action Affirmative action by definition is a system designed to remedy past discrimination and eliminate current and future discrimination. This has become quite the problem in many areas. I have read and come to understand that this is an immense problem within the universities. In one university this has been pinpointed and tried in court numerous times, such as the University of Michigan. Michigan policies amount to a quota system that unfairly rewards or penalizes perspective students, based solely on their race. America is a diverse country, racially, economically, and ethnically. We all believe that our institutions of higher education should reflect the diversity we try so hard to portray. Also, being in a university based on different backgrounds of many different people, this teaches you respect, understanding, and goodwill. So the question is, do the universities have the right to single out students solely because of their skin color on whether or not they’re academically equipped for their institution? There were two separate but parallel cases based on just that very question. The Grutter vs. Bollinger case decided on a 5 to 4 vote to uphold the University of Michigan’s law school affirmative action policy, which would be in favor of the minorities. The next case Gratz vs. Bollinger showed a 6 to 3 vote, which struck down the affirmative action policy for undergraduate admissions. In the first ruling of affirmative action in higher education admissions, the nation’s highest court ruled that race could be used in university admission decisions. They also had to put limits to the amount of play the factor of race can have in your actual admission process. My thoughts on this are very simple. I believe and always have believed that your mental ability has nothing to do with your background, your skin color, nor does it have anything to do with your religion. I was contemplating that thought and if you think about it, it re... Free Essays on Affirmative Action Affirmative action works. There are thousands of examples of situations where people of color, white women, and working class women and men of all races who were previously excluded from jobs or educational opportunities, or were denied opportunities once admitted, have gained access through affirmative action. When these policies received executive branch and judicial support, vast numbers of people of color, white women and men have gained access they would not otherwise have had. These gains have led to very real changes. Affirmative action programs have not eliminated racism, nor have they always been implemented without problems. However, there would be no struggle to roll back the gains achieved if affirmative action policies were ineffective. The implementation of affirmative action was America's first honest attempt at solving a problem, it had previously chosen to ignore. In a variety of areas, from the quality of health care to the rate of employment, blacks still remain fa r behind whites. Their representation in the more prestigious professions is still almost insignificant. Comparable imbalances exist for other racial and ethnic minorities as well as for women. Yet, to truly understand the importance of affirmative action, one must look at America's past discrimination to see why, at this point in history, we must become more "color conscious". History Of Discrimination In America: Events Leading To Affirmative Action. The Declaration of Independence asserts that "all men are created equal." Yet America is scarred by a long history of legally imposed inequality. Snatched from their native land, transported thousands of miles-in a nightmare of disease and death-and sold into slavery, blacks in America were reduced to the legal status of farm animals. A Supreme Court opinion, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), made this official by classifying slaves as a species of "private property." Even after slavery was abolished by the Thirt... Free Essays on Affirmative Action AFFIRMATIVE ACTION The original goal of the civil rights movement had been "color-blind" laws. However, many people believed that simply ending a long-standing policy of discrimination did not go far enough. They believed that affirmative measures to increase equality were necessary that’s why affirmative action was created. Affirmative Action, are policies used in the United States to encourage the increase of opportunities for women and minorities like favoring them in hiring and promotion, college admissions, salary increases, career advancement or scholarships. Depending upon the situation, â€Å"minorities† might include any underrepresented group, especially one defined by race, ethnicity, or gender. Generally, affirmative action has been undertaken by governments, businesses, or educational institutions to remedy the effects of past discrimination against a group, whether by a specific entity, such as a corporation, or by society as a whole. Critics charge that affirmative action policies, which give preferential treatment to people based on their membership in a group, violate the principal that all individuals are equal under the law. These critics argue that it is unfair to discriminate against members of one group today to compensate for discrimination against other groups in the past. They regard affirmative action as a form of reverse discrimination that unfairly prevents whites and men from being hired and promoted. But in the other side discrimination is, by definition, an unfair treatment of people because they belong to a certain group. Therefore, effective solutions must be given to aid groups that have suffered from discrimination. We might achieve one of the goals of affirmative action namely, increasing diversity in higher education by improving the odds for minority student engaging them in a high-quality education at every level. Affirmative action policies are the only way to ensure an integra... Free Essays on Affirmative Action Who Ever Is the Most Qualified When a person is being interviewed for a job, should it depend on their color or sex whether they get the job or not? My reply is it shouldn't depend on either of those two things. It should be determined by whether they are the best qualified for the job they are applying for. The effects of affirmative action are hurtful to many people. I truly do not understand why there is such a thing as affirmative action. Louis P. Pojman gives this as a definition; †Affirmative action is the effort to rectify the injustice of the past by special policies. Put this way, it is Janus-faced or ambiguous, having both a backward-looking and a forward-looking feature. The backward-looking feature is its attempt to correct and compensate for past injustice. This aspect of affirmative action is strictly deontological. The forward-looking feature is it’s implicit ideal of a society free from prejudice; this is both deontological and utilitarianâ€Å"(420). Just by this definitio n you could tell affirmative action was not well thought out. First of all you can not change the past. Therefore what ever is being done now about the rights of women and blacks does not compensate for how they were once treated. As Louis P. Pojman Said, â€Å"Sometimes a wrong cannot be compensated, and we just have to make the best of an imperfect world†(430). By giving an unqualified women a job over an over-qualified man does not fix all the problems we had in the past. Also if a black person and a white person both applied for the same job and the white person had more experience, should the black person just be hired to meet a quota? That would not be fair. This to me is doing the same thing we had done in the past except it is reversed against white people. By giving a job to a black person just because of their color is just as bad as turning them away for their color. Louis P. Pojman explains, â€Å"This message holds t... Free Essays on Affirmative Action Affirmative Action The first difficulty to a rational discussion of Affirmative Action is defining exactly what it is. Because it’s bring into play has been limited in certain respects by court decisions, certain descriptors are avoided, even if it is not entirely clear that they do not rightly be relevant. Affirmative Action is often defined by its deliberate result: a way of correcting the historical wrongs suffered by certain minority groups, especially blacks. But that could apply to any kind of reimbursement program, whether financial or educational, including one that directed certain actions to be taken. Any attempt to define Affirmative Action particularly launches one immediately on controversy, because it introduces the very elements that are so hotly contested or sighted. Affirmative action, in theory, is a matter of distributive justice, which is why liberals and progressives tend to look benevolently on it while conservatives and libertarians consider it a travesty. But in practice, does it actually advance the cause of justice in America? In some respects it has attempted to remedy the long-term effects of slavery and racial segregation; then again, programs that benefit women and recent immigrants cannot be defended on those grounds. Is it supposed to enhance "diversity" in colleges, professional schools and workplaces, or is it more specifically a set of programs for enhancing the class mobility of people who are structurally disadvantaged from birth? How can we decide whether affirmative action has been successfuland how can we decide whether affirmative action could ever be so successful as to become obsolete? (Bà ©rubà ©, Michael 2005) Affirmative Action may also contain acceptance of a minority applicant in cases where other applicants would be considered as unqualified, even though no qualified applicant is displaced. Affirmative Action is mainly occupied in applications to educational institutions, and in e... Free Essays on Affirmative Action The original goal of the civil rights movement had been "color-blind" laws. However, many people believed that simply ending a long-standing policy of discrimination did not go far enough. They believed that affirmative measures to increase equality were necessary that’s why affirmative action was created. Affirmative Action, are policies used in the United States to encourage the increase of opportunities for women and minorities like favoring them in hiring and promotion, college admissions, salary increases, career advancement or scholarships. Depending upon the situation, â€Å"minorities† might include any underrepresented group, especially one defined by race, ethnicity, or gender. Generally, affirmative action has been undertaken by governments, businesses, or educational institutions to remedy the effects of past discrimination against a group, whether by a specific entity, such as a corporation, or by society as a whole. Critics charge that affirmative action policies, which give preferential treatment to people based on their membership in a group, violate the principal that all individuals are equal under the law. These critics argue that it is unfair to discriminate against members of one group today to compensate for discrimination against other groups in the past. They regard affirmative action as a form of reverse discrimination that unfairly prevents whites and men from being hired and promoted. But in the other side discrimination is, by definition, an unfair treatment of people because they belong to a certain group. Therefore, effective solutions must be given to aid groups that have suffered from discrimination. We might achieve one of the goals of affirmative action namely, increasing diversity in higher education by improving the odds for minority student engaging them in a high-quality education at every level. Affirmative action policies are the only way to ensure an integrated society in which a... Free Essays on Affirmative Action There are many issues in today’s society that have two solid sides to them, sides, or positions, that cannot be proven absolutely wrong or right. Issues such as capital punishment, abortion, labor unions, animal rights and the list goes on and on. But one issue of this sort haunts our schools, our industries, and the subject, or core, of the issue has haunted our country for the last century. The subject of race, and the issue of affirmative action. In the case of affirmative action, like other controversial issues, each side is strongly supported and neither side can be proven right or proven wrong. The supporters claim it is the best way to ensure equal opportunity in the schools and in the workplace, while those opposing it claim that it merely takes away opportunity from one race, and unjustly hands it to another. The side of this fine line that will be exploited in the following paragraphs is the side opposing affirmative action. The results of affirmative action are more harmful than helpful because it negatively affects the general public, denies opportunity to the deserving, and is an abuse of law and power by government. First, affirmative action negatively affects the public by setting quotas and standards in fields of life that race should have no preference to. For example: colleges and universities. Standards should not be set on which percentage of which race should attend a college or university. An Ivy League school shouldn’t be required to have a percentage of students of each race and nationality. They should be allowed to enroll whom they feel best suits the educational requirements needed to be successful at the school. When standards are in effect students, who were accepted as a result of affirmative action, may find they cannot meet the educational requirements at the school and fail out. This in turn will more than likely either waste a years worth of work, and the individual will just attend another univer... Free Essays on Affirmative Action Affirmative Action Has it run its course By: Joan Siegel â€Å"It is a mistake to assume that the Negro, who had been a slave for two hundred and fifty years, gained his freedom by the signing, on a certain date, of a certain paper by the President of the United States. It is a mistake to assume that one man can, in any true sense, give freedom to another. Freedom, in a larger and higher sense, every man must gain for himself.† Booker T. Washington In his Autobiography The problem in a realistic model of Affirmative Action is due to the history, political evolution and complicated definition. Affirmative Action as such has never been a law or even government policy. Affirmative Action has been comprised of a series of executive orders, governmental programs, civil rights laws, and enforcement of equal opportunity practices. The basis for Affirmative Action dates as far back as, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which stated â€Å"all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Terri tory, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens ¼Ã¢â‚¬ ( Marable, 4). Then in 1941, F.D.R. signed Executive order 8802, which outlawed discriminatory hiring practices by defense related industries holding federal contracts. Subsequently President Truman formed the Government Contract Compliance Committee that advocated the Bureau of Employment Security to act confidently and in a positive manner to execute the guiding principle of nondiscrimination in its role of placement counseling. Therefore the word Affirmative Action was not used until President Kennedy's executive order 10925 in 1961. The basic idea to eliminate prejudices has been around for over a century. I believe that when President Kennedy established Affirmative Action it was a necessary and ... Free Essays on Affirmative Action Affirmative action works. There are thousands of examples of situations where people of color, white women, and working class women and men of all races who were previously excluded from jobs or educational opportunities, or were denied opportunities once admitted, have gained access through affirmative action. When these policies received executive branch and judicial support, vast numbers of people of color, white women and men have gained access they would not otherwise have had. These gains have led to very real changes. Affirmative action programs have not eliminated racism, nor have they always been implemented without problems. However, there would be no struggle to roll back the gains achieved if affirmative action policies were ineffective. The implementation of affirmative action was America's first honest attempt at solving a problem, it had previously chosen to ignore. In a variety of areas, from the quality of health care to the rate of employment, blacks still remain far behind whites. Their representation in the more prestigious professions is still almost insignificant. Comparable imbalances exist for other racial and ethnic minorities as well as for women. Yet, to truly understand the importance of affirmative action, one must look at America's past discrimination to see why, at this point in history, we must become more "color conscious". History Of Discrimination In America: Events Leading To Affirmative Action. The Declaration of Independence asserts that "all men are created equal." Yet America is scarred by a long history of legally imposed inequality. Snatched from their native land, transported thousands of miles-in a nightmare of disease and death-and sold into slavery, blacks in America were reduced to the legal status of farm animals. A Supreme Court opinion, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), made this official by classifying slaves as a species of "private property." Even after slavery was abolished by... Free Essays on Affirmative Action As we look at the United States of America and its people today we can see that a large number of the population is racially mixed. It is almost impossible to say that a person is one thing or another. It seems that all existing races and nationalities are to be found somewhere in the country. Several reasons are the cause of such a vast diversity of people. One of the reasons is the idea of living the American dream. People from all over the world, especially poor countries, try to come to the U.S. to start a new, better life, it does not matter if legal or illegal. Upon arrival many have to find out that life is not easy as it sometimes appears, not even in America. Employment is difficult to find and those who find a job are often underpaid or have to deal with other difficulties. To prevent situations like these from happening the government has come up with a plan known as affirmative action to protect all people that are not white males. Affirmative action means taking positive steps to recruit, hire, train, and promote individuals from groups that have traditionally been discriminated against on the basis of race, sex, disability, or other characteristics. In this sense, affirmative action goes beyond equal employment opportunity, which requires employers to eliminate discriminatory conditions, whether inadvertent or intentional, and to treat all employees equally in the workplace. The requirements can be imposed on an employer in a number of ways: by federal law, for federal government contractors and subcontractors; as part of a conciliation agreement with a state or federal agency; or by court order. In addition, some employers voluntarily adopt affirmative action plans in an effort to create a more balanced workforce. Nevertheless the situation was not always as good as it is seems to be today. Due to the history of the United States of America, affirmative action has come a long way, however it still has to go even further b... Free Essays on Affirmative Action Introduction Affirmative action works. There are thousands of examples of situations where people of color, white women, and working class women and men of all races who were previously excluded from jobs or educational opportunities, or were denied opportunities once admitted, have gained access through affirmative action. When these policies received executive branch and judicial support, vast numbers of people of color, white women and men have gained access they would not otherwise have had. These gains have led to very real changes. Affirmative action programs have not eliminated racism, nor have they always been implemented without problems. However, there would be no struggle to roll back the gains achieved if affirmative action policies were ineffective. Affirmative Action in Businesses Affirmative action has had its greatest amount of success in city, state, and government jobs. Since the 1960s the area of law enforcement witnessed the greatest increase in minority applicants, and in jobs offered to minorities. This should be viewed as an extremely positive thing, because prior to affirmative action these jobs were almost completely closed off to minorities and woman. The influx has been greatest in the area of government, state and city, because this type of work is easier for affirmative action to watch over and regulate. Affirmative action has experienced considerably less success in integration in big business. This is doing to the fact that big business has been more resistant to affirmative action and harder to regulate. Affirmative action addresses preferential hiring programs. Many times people of color have been excluded from hiring pools, overtly discriminated against, unfairly eliminated because of inappropriate qualification standards, or have been rendered unqualified because of discrimination in education and housing. Court decisions on affirmative action have rendered illegal those qualifications that are no...