Buy essay on Affirmative action

Affirmative action is usually understood as improving the material status of people who are less advantaged in society, usually by providing educational or economic preference (benefits in education, employment, or contracting). It is the practice of giving benefits to racial minorities or women when they are hired as employees, giving awards or deciding whom to choose.
Affirmative action is developed of a wish to bring minorities into educational institutions and professions that by tradition had been dominated by white people. The first time it came in sight after the Civil Rights movement that was in the 1960s as a trial to support the legal equality created for minority groups with social and economic equality. It came in support in 1964 by the Civil Rights Act, in 1965 by the Voting Rights Act and in 1968 by the Civil Rights Act.
Affirmative Action is understood as an “active” policy and is opposite to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), which is called a “passive” one. Nowadays such programs make special actions in order to create more different workforce. EEO just forbids discrimination and asks employers to determine if there is discrimination in their companies. Affirmative Action wants employers to control their progress towards equality and to assess achievement of such goals. At the same time EEO doesn’t set such goals (Cosson. 47).
Affirmative Action does not set quotas; it just requires organizations to investigate if they have any kind of practices that limit minority employment or promotion. If there are such practices, so they must create a plan how to solve the problems, create a progress and measure their success (Sztuczko-Payk, 1998).
Affirmative action can have many forms, starting from strict quotas to targeted outreach created in order to encourage minorities to use the program, but all forms include a wish to increase the number of minority groups in educational institutions, at workplaces and in receiving contracts. The programs of affirmative action are different in terms of how big impact they make to race minorities as a factor while making a decision. Here is an example: rigid quotas or set-asides quotas that require a certain number of beneficiaries be members of certain racial groups differ from programs in which race is used as one factor among many while decision making. After all, there is still a big difference between the government’s setting goals and the government’s reporting about specific results.
There are a lot of pros when we think about Affirmative Action. So, Krishna Tummala from K-State says that “The Affirmative action is a primary legal tool to promote minorities who have been historically discriminated against and there is a lot of evidence that minorities have been brought into the mainstream and accepted.”(Potucek. 2003).
If to talk about the Pro-Affirmative Action side, so it is sure that the program is fair and necessary. Proponents of such action admit that it is absolutely necessary to be sure those minority groups have fair chances and opportunity in getting a job or education. There are some statistics and reasons why Affirmative Action remains vital:
1. Schools that work with minority group of children in a city receive a half of the money per every student that schools in white suburbs get ( Mosley. 94).
2. Statistics says that in 1990, the average black worker earned $731 for every $1,000 that white worker earned. At the same time, Latino men earned $810 for every $1,000 that was earned by white men with the same education.
3. Even if white men make up only 43% of the total US workforce, they still hold 97% of the managerial positions at the 1,500 largest corporations of the USA.
4. It is desirable to have diversity, but it doesn’t always occur if left to chance. The education process includes learning how to interact with different nationalities and races. A lot of students have very separate lives up until they start college that is why their opinions of other races are based on stereotypes. So, with the help of interaction, students learn that people of the opposite race are people too, just like themselves. Since the diversity is desirable, so colleges should represent a wide range of backgrounds, but it is impossible without affirmative action. Diversity is so important; that it can’t be left to chance.
5. Students who start at a disadvantage need a good boost. To tell the truth, usually minority students begin at a disadvantage in their college or a process of job application. Such students usually are from low-income families and get less opportunity to enter private schools as white students have. Sincere and hard-working minority students are the same capable as white students, but because of differences, they may have different paper qualifications. So, affirmative action gives less or more equal opportunities.
6. Affirmative action involves people in areas of study and work about which they may never think. Men can be brought into nursing, and women brought into technical fields, or minorities brought into good schools, all these shows that it is useful to involve people into areas of study or work that they may not have expected. If we change stereotypes now, we will not need affirmative action in future (Tomasson. p.201).
7. There are stereotypes that might be never broken without affirmative action. For a long time black people were considered less skillful and capable than white people, but such programs gave black people the chance to show that they are capable as well. These and some other stereotypes have started to change and will change with the help of affirmative action.
8. Affirmative action is necessary in order to compensate minorities for ages of slavery or oppression. During the first centuries of the U.S.’s existence white people enslave and oppress black people, Indians and other minorities. Minorities used to provide unpaid labor, were subject of punishments, their land was taken from them and they felt a lack of most of the fundamental rights that were provided by Constitution. That is, affirmative action is a good way to compensate the descendants for the evils done to their ancestors (Messerli, 2009).