What is affermative action and do you suppot them?

Question

What is affermative action and do you suppot them?

Answer 1

Affirmative action is forcing an employer to hire a certain amount of racial minorities, regardless if they are the best qualified or not. It is a form of racism against racial majorities.

Answer 2

Affirmative action is evolving. At first it was a set of policies that set targets for governement and business to hire more minorities and for colleges to admit more minorities. For example 40 years ago white men made up about 40% of the population but they held 90% of the jobs. If everything were fair and equitable, the minority percentages in the the workforce would look like the population.

So affirmative action programs were developed to accelerate the diversification of the work force. For good or bad, this was often done through race-based quotas sometime resutling in reversere discrimination. In other words, the best candidate did not always get the job because affirmative action policies required the hiring of more minorities, who may have been less qualified. This inherent unfairness was deemed acceptable by many because of the unfairness of the past. The reason there were not enough qualified minority candidates is because they were denied educational and employment opportunities in the past. It was also a way to overcome the natural tendancy for business to hire only those people that resembled their existing work force. In other words it was intended to 'jumpstart' the opportunity and employment cycle for disadvantaged minorities.

Affirmative action policies today are a bit different. The goal is still a diversified workforce, but the methods are different. No hard quotas. The best qualified candidate always gets the job, but there are outreaches, programs and opportunities targeted (but not exclusive) to minorities to encourage diversity.

If it all works, affirmative action will have worked and will no longer be needed. many think that is true today. Things are much better, but there are still inequities in the workforce

Answer 3

If you don't know what affirmative action is, then why are you asking if we'd support them (which still doesn't even make sense).