Affirmative action has, in various forms, existed for over thirty-three years, beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although the reasons for its inception vary drastically with current reasons for its continuance, affirmative action has managed to survive. However, people are now beginning to question this system. Affirmative action has served its purpose, but its usefulness has dissipated; it is time for a change.
To understand what is presently wrong with affirmative action, one needs to study why affirmative action's fathers created the racial preference system. Affirmative action came into being during Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. When Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Act introduced affirmative action along with its enforcing commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In 1964, blacks were just emerging from the chains of segregation left from many years of slavery. Discrimination occurred rampantly, and where discrimination appeared to be the problem, affirmative action was the solution.
As Congress debated the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, concerns arose that Title VII of the pending bill-the section dealing with discrimination in the workplace-could lead to the widespread practice of reverse discrimination. Stalwart liberal senators such as Hubert Humphrey, Joseph Clark, and Clifford Case all adamantly and unequivocally denied that the bill could be interpreted to permit racial preference. Humphrey and other supporters inserted an amendment to the bill specifically stating that the purpose of the bill was to rectify cases of intentional discrimination and they did not intend to impose sanctions because a workplace contained few blacks (Long 10). In addition, Humphrey vowed to "start eating the pages [of the Civil Rights Bill] one after another" if anyone could discover language in it "which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota" (Long 18). Fourteen years later the Supreme Court would reign in the zealous enforcement of affirmative action and declare quotas unconstitutional.
Officially, the term affirmative action describes proactive steps taken by the government or the private sector to create a more diverse work force or campus. However, the once noble idea of affirmative action has snowballed, and has created an avalanche of backlash that is sure to bury the affirmative action ideal.
According to Robert Emmet Long, "Affirmative action was introduced to lend assistance to blacks and did not apply to other ethnic groups or women" (7). Also clarifying the initial approach to affirmative action is Thomas Sowell: "In the beginning, affirmative action meant nothing more than special outreach to black high school students to get them to apply to colleges where they might not have felt welcome before. After that, they would be judged by the same standards as everyone else" (53).
However, as time progressed, politicians added to, changed, and restructured affirmative action. In late September 1965, President Johnson came to believe that it was not enough just to remove legal barriers confronting minorities. On September 24, 1965, Johnson issued an executive order requiring federal contractors to take affirmative action to recruit, hire, and promote more racial minorities. Just two years later, in another executive order, Johnson added women to the groups covered by previous anti-discrimination orders (Regents 1).
More time passed. In the 1980s, conservative Presidents Reagan and Bush questioned affirmative action. The first major blow to affirmative action came in 1978, when the Supreme Court declared in Regents of the University of California V. Bakke that numerical quotas were unconstitutional. In the Bakke case, the medical school at the University of California at Davis had set aside a certain number of spots in the entering class for minority students. Alan Bakke, a white student, applied to the medical school at Davis, but the medical school denied his acceptance even though it accepted other minority students with lower test scores and grades. Bakke sued, and the case wound its way to the Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that numerical quotas were unconstitutional, but race could be used as "a plus factor in admissions" (Regents 1). This provision is what most current affirmative action practices are based upon.
What had been whispers of an affirmative action revolution turned into loud cries for reform when the Republican's "right wing" came to power in the congressional elections of 1994. What people had softly questioned now suddenly became a rallying point. People cried out with pleas to lead a colorblind society (Long 7).
Finally, in 1996, the first legislation was drafted to combat affirmative action-but the legislation was not in the United States Congress. The bill was Proposition 209, an amendment by initiative to the California State Constitution. California voters ratified the proposition on November 5, 1996, and it is now Article I, Section 31 of the Californian Constitution:
The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting. (Prop 209, 1)
Although civil liberty groups immediately challenged the amendment in court, it is currently being enforced as law in California. Many other states are currently considering similar legislation.
One might receive the impression that a few white men gathered around a table on one rainy afternoon and plotted how to destroy affirmative action, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Mr. Ward Connerly-a black businessman-led the crusade to enact Proposition 209. Connerly finds it insulting that any black person might need affirmative action to compete, as do many other successful black people (Pooley 34).
The end of affirmative action began long ago when the system changed from an outreach program to a program demanding that minorities and women be hired. Cases of abuse, misuse, and fraud riddle the history of affirmative action. A few examples follow:
Many of affirmative actions' beneficiaries are those least likely to comprehend the imminent changes for society. One black woman from California asked the following question during a rally opposing Proposition 209: "Are we not entitled to jobs just because we are not as qualified?" (Sowell 53). Well, ma'am, that's correct. No one is entitled to anything. Every individual must work diligently to acquire the skills needed to gain an advantage in today's society. Being born with dark skin should not be a marketable advantage-but with affirmative action, it is.
Affirmative action's founding fathers designed affirmative action as an attempt to enlarge opportunity for all. On the contrary, affirmative action as it stands gives one group of people an unfair advantage over another group. Seldom has a democratic government's policy so completely contradicted the core values of its citizenry as racial preference does in violating the universally held American ideals of fairness and individual rights (Long 5). Presently, Americans do not believe that past discrimination against blacks justifies present discrimination against whites (Long 15).
Affirmative action judges people more by their group membership than by their individual identity. That is what is wrong with the concept of affirmative action, and that is why affirmative action will soon change.
Works Cited
An Affirmative
Action Primer. Online. Available URL:
http://www.pilotonline.com/extra/affirmative/primer.html. 27 Oct. 1997.
Long, Robert Emmet, ed. Affirmative Action. New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1996.
Pooley, Eric. "Fairness or Folly." Time. 23 June 1997: 32-36.
Prop 209. Previously online. Previous URL: http://www.cadep.org/index.html.
1 Jan. 1998
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Previously online. Previous URL:
http://civnet.org/resoures/teach/basic/part6/41.htm. 1 Jan. 1998.
Sowell, Thomas. "Drive a Stake Through It." Forbes.
26 Aug. 1996: 53.
This article was submitted in my high school English class on January 14, 1998.