Affirmative Action

Affirmative action works. There are thousands of situations when discrimated people did not get a job or

When these policies received government

support, vast numbers of people of color, white women and men have gained access

they would not otherwise have had. These gains have led to very real changes. Affirmative

action programs have not eliminated racism, nor have they always been implemented without

problems. However, there would be no struggle to roll back the gains achieved if affirmative

action policies were ineffective. The implementation of affirmative action was America's first

honest attempt at solving a problem, it had previously chosen to ignore. In a variety of areas,

from the quality of health care to the rate of employment, blacks still remain far behind whites.

Their representation in the more prestigious professions is still almost insignificant. Comparable

imbalances exist for other racial and ethnic minorities as well as for women. Yet, to truly

understand the importance of affirmative action, one must look at America's past discrimination

to see why, at this point in history, we must become more "color conscious". History Of

Discrimination In America: Events Leading To Affirmative Action. The Declaration of

Independence asserts that "all men are created equal." Yet America is scarred by a long history

of legally imposed inequality. Snatched from their native land, transported thousands of miles-in

a nightmare of disease and death-and sold into slavery, blacks in America were reduced to the

legal status of farm animals. A Supreme Court opinion, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), made

this official by classifying slaves as a species of "private property." Even after slavery was

abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, American blacks, other minorities, and

women continued to be deprived of some of the most elementary right of citizenship. During the

Reconstruction, after the end of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868,

making blacks citizens and promised them the "equal protection of the laws." In 1870 the

Fifteenth Amendment was passed, which gave blacks the right to vote. Congress also passed a

number of civil rights laws barring discrimination against blacks in hotels, theaters, and other

places. However, the South reacted by passing the "Black Codes, " which severely limited the

rights of the newly freed slaves, preventing them in most states from testifying in courts against

whites, limiting their opportunities to find work, and generally assigning them to the status of

second or third class citizen. White vigilante groups like the Klu Klux Klan began to appear, by

murdering and terrorizing blacks who tried to exercise their new rights. "Legal" ways were also

found for circumventing the new laws; these included "grandfather clauses", poll taxes, white

only primary elections, and constant social discrimination against and intimidation of blacks, who

were excluded form education and from any job except the most menial. Affirmative action has

had its greatest amount of success in city, state, and government jobs. Since the 1960s the area

of law enforcement witnessed the greatest increase in minority applicants, and in jobs offered to

minorities. This should be viewed as an extremely positive thing, because prior to affirmative

action these jobs were almost completely closed off to minorities and woman. The influx has

been greatest in the area of government, state and