Affirmative Action

After doing a little more research on affirmative action, I developed a further understanding on the history behind it and why it has been such a huge movement in our American society. Our book defines affirmative action as, “an outgrowth of equal employment opportunity.” The goal of this is to proactively prevent discrimination by not allowing employers to deny applications due to sex, race, national origin etc. The goal is to have an equal balanced ratio of employees, and eliminating discrimination.

Affirmative action was first introduced by President JFK in 1961; it was made in order to enforce civil rights laws as well as constitutional guarantees. Interestingly, by the 1970s affirmative action had caused reverse discrimination; for example, a white student was denied into medical school for two years straight because they already had enough whites, even though he had exceptional grades. Because of this, “the Supreme Court outlawed inflexible quota systems in affirmative action programs, which in this case had unfairly discriminated against a white applicant.” (Affirmative). Back lashes of angry white men started to occur; no they felt like the ones being treated unfairly. Fortunately, today’s society strives to give jobs to whomever is most qualified weather it be a man, woman, black or white.