Affirmative Action :: American Government, Race Relations, EEO

Affirmative human actionionIn the United States, Affirmative Action is one of the government programs to sweep over the effects of past societal discrimination by allocating jobs and resources to members of specific groups, such as minorities and women. The policy was put forth by federal agencies enforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and two executive orders, which provided that government contractors and educational institutions receiving federal funds develop such programs. The Equal Employment Opportunities Act (1972) set up a military mission to enforce such plans. The establishment of racial quotas in the name of affirmative action brought the charges of so-called reverse discrimination into the late 1970s. Although the U.S. Supreme tribunal recognised such an argument in the gaffe University of California v. Bakke (1978), it let existing programs stand and it also approved the use of quotas in 1979 in a case involving voluntary affirmative-action programs in unions and private businesses. In the 1980s, the federal governments role in affirmative action was considerably diluted. In three cases in 1989, the Supreme Court undercut court-approved affirmative action plans by giving greater standing to claims of reverse discrimination, voiding the use of minority set-asides where past discrimination against minority contractors was unproven, and confine the use of statistics to prove discrimination, since statistics did not prove intent. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 reaffirmed a federal governments commitment to affirmative action, but a 1995 Supreme Court close placed limits on the use of race in awarding government contracts the affected government programs were revamped in the late 1990s to encompass any person who was "socially disadvantaged.