Civil Rights and Affirmative Action essays

Civil Rights and Affirmative Action essays Think of this, a man is ignored and shut out at work because everyone thinks he got his job because of his color. The problem is, he was more qualified than every other person, black or white, that applied for the job, and he is treated like he is not qualified. This whole situation should be avoided. Our affirmative action policies in America need to be changed. The ways that people look at each other is different in the workplace because everyone wonders if they or a co-worker has gotten their job due to affirmative action. Minorities think that affirmative action is used to help past wrongs, but whites see it as a form of reverse discrimination. People say that unqualified minorities get jobs from more qualified whites, and that is causing more qualified people to take lower-paying jobs. Since the beginning of the use of affirmative action, America has become a racially tense and a strained place to live in, since whites and minorities fail to agree on the effectiveness of this pr actice. Affirmative Action is defined by Webster's New World College Dictionary as " a policy or program for correcting the effects of discrimination in the employment or education of members of certain groups." Affirmative Action was designed to help eliminate past & present discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. This was implemented because of the discrimination that minorities received from the whites of America (Kivel 9). The actual phrase "affirmative action" was first used in President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Executive Order 11246, which requires federal contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin," (Lewis 15). In 1967, Johnson expanded the Executive Order to include affirmative action requirements to benefit women (Peters 43). Originally, these civil rights programs wer...