The country’s politicians finally realized that blacks and women were unfairly kept from equal employment opportunities (among many other biases). So, Congress undertook civil rights legislation beginning in 1964. One Act in 1964 was not enough, so President Johnson produced an executive order in 1965 which was designed to be a sort of amendment to the act, and which was specifically aimed at ending so-called “inequality” in schools and at the workplace. This was the birth of what we now call “Affirmative Action”. “Affirmative Action is a policy designed to create a nondiscriminatory environment for the management of human resources and the distribution of economic benefits…It means taking a second look to be fair to everyone who applies for a job or admission to college.” (Anderson PG). This and subsequent bills not only enabled African-Americans to find equal job and educational opportunities, but it also allowed no discrimination because of gender. Women were now empowered in seeking jobs and pay equal to men.
More about opportunities for women shortly. But, we need to discuss whether Civil Rights legislation and Affirmative Action have done everything they were supposed to accomplish. The answer, in many cases, is either No, or Not Yet. It has now been more than fort-two years since the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, became law. And, many people will agree that much still needs to be done. It seems, however, that while Affirmative action is still being scrupulously (in most cases) observed in the American work-place, blacks still feel they are not nearly as well taken care of as women. It is still a color bias, not a gender bias. It is a sad fact that, while millions of women are now employed, they are represented in only 48% of all managerial jobs. Women still earn less than men- about 72% of what men earn in similar jobs.
Statistics show that minorities have not made meaningful advances in the workplace. 56% of blacks polled by the Los Angeles TIMES felt that affirmative action has not gone far enough in promoting the interest of minorities. But, here is an interesting sidelight to that statistic: black women hold twice as many managerial jobs as black men.
At this point it is necessary to point out what some read into the Civil Rights and Affirmative Action legislations- something that is not what they think it is: Namely, that the idea of affirmative action is not to EXCLUDE anyone, but at the same time not to INCLUDE someone simply because of race or gender. Affirmative Action, it must be pointed out, is no guarantee of a job, only the fact that one cannot be excluded from applying for a job, or being given that job (or turned down) because of the color of their skin or their gender (or, for that matter, if they are disabled). Yes, affirmative action can open doors, legislation does NOT assure any applicant of a job- unless they are as well or better qualified than another applicant. What Affirmative Action should not be doing is to imply that there should be quotas set to make up for “lost time” among minorities, women, and the disabled.
The purpose of Affirmative Action is to assure fairness for all, not give anyone a leg up. There is some evidence that, in some instances, Affirmative Action may have gone beyond its intended effect. In an article in Human Events magazine we read that “…Because of their skin color, ‘white’, 5,000 applicants were prohibited from taking the firefighter exam in Los Angeles in February 1994. This injustice resulted from a 1974 consent decree…(which)…effectively required the department to hire 50% of its firefighters from among minorities” (Brownfield 137).
Overall, however, as the white majority shrinks in favor of Hispanics and African-Americans, some problems occur in the quality of work. Recent Labor Dept. statistics now show that white males will be only 15 percent of new workers. The rest will be white women, immigrants and a lot of minorities including blacks, Hispanics and Asians.
Despite the fact that Affirmative Action and Civil Rights legislation have, and continue, to provide some upward mobility for minorities in the U.S., there are still far too many African-Americans and Latinos in minimum-wage jobs. One reason, frankly, is that not enough of these minorities go on to college and too many still drop out of high school. Too many Affirmative Action enthusiasts carp that the progress is too slow. For example: “The Dallas Morning News decided to take a look at workplace diversity in the United States by analyzing census data for a variety of occupations that wield influence and shape society–law, medicine, the clergy, journalism and several other important professions. The analysis found that the percentages of racial and ethnic minorities in each occupation examined by The News treaded water or slowly sank between 1990 and 2000. The raw number of minorities increased in nearly all job categories but failed to keep pace with minority population increases during the decade” (Parks and Godinez 2).
There are also some disturbing statistics which affect the success in other areas of Affirmative Action. There are figures which tend to prove that many minority workers are simply not prepared, don’t ask, don’t know, or maybe don’t care about some specific savings plans, either through their unions or their employers. Having some sort of vested interest can mean more company loyalty, enjoyment of the job, wanting to progress and move up in the company, and in general, feeling good about employment and the ability to retire. It is a frightening fact that all too many minority workers do not plan for retirement and therefore end up living at or near the poverty level and requiring welfare support, over and above Social Security. According to the survey, only 59% of African-American workers and 50% of Latino workers indicated they have saved money for retirement, significantly less than the 71% of all Americans in the workplace. These are the folks who earn just enough to get by throughout their working lives, and, as a result, can’t save much for their retirement” (Nelson 2003 13A). In other words, one of the failures of Affirmative Action- since it cannot be placed anywhere else- is the failure to properly train, inform and encourage minority workers about their future. Could it be that too many of them are still concerned about their present?
What really needs to be aired about the success, partial success, or occasional failure of Affirmative Action is how the public feels when discussing the “race card.” “Most whites believe all Americans now have an equal opportunity to succeed, and if they don’t succeed it is probably their own fault. Yet many of those same whites recognize that people of color sometimes lack the education and training needed to succeed” (Varner and Brune A1).
As various state propositions and ballot initiatives have come to a vote, it is clear that public opinion about Affirmative Action is still sharply divided, even today: “When you put the issue of affirmative action before voters, voters have rejected it…What they say is that, minority voters still support affirmative action, and White voters overwhelmingly vote against it, including White women. You have an obvious racial divide in this country about how you approach the question of equality and equal access” (Price 3A).
Affirmative Action may have an increasing effect on the bottom end of the wage scale for blacks, but it hasn’t done much to increase the number of black professionals: “Although blacks make up 12.4 percent of the population, they are only 3.3 percent of the nation’s lawyers, 4.2 percent of its physicians, and 3.7 percent of its engineers. In 1984, blacks made up 1.1 percent of all county and city managers, increasing to 1.6 percent in 1994.” (Carlton 22).. While these statistics are about a decade old, the percentages have changed little.
There is much evidence that Affirmative Action may have been a beginning and helped some black males, it has not done enough. In a 1998 article in the New Republic, Glen Loury, a Boston University economist, points out that even during the boom of the 1990s, compared to whites, blacks continued to have disproportionately high unemployment and poverty rates, as well as much lower family income and rates of household wealth…While black unemployment declined in both 1989 and 1999, blacks tended to have poorer labor market outcomes. According to the 2000 Census, black unemployment in 1999 was 11.6 percent, compared to unemployment of 4.6, 5.1, and 9.3 percent for whites, Asians, and Hispanics.” (Foster-Bey 19). Because many feel that a good education is important in getting a good job, Foster-Bey also points out that, despite more “open enrollment” at colleges, as a result of Affirmative action, there are still some poor results for blacks, because they still lagged behind both whites and Asians in their level of education. In 1999, 20 percent of blacks 25 years and older had at least a bachelor’s degree. The corresponding figures for whites, Asians, and Hispanics were 33, 51, and 15 percent.
Unfortunately, there is now a “blame game” among blacks who believe that Affirmative Action is more beneficial to women than to them: “Between 1985 and 2000, blacks’ median wage advanced on whites’ by a mere 1.2 percent. Why? Because although ‘affirmative action programs are often described in the press as being based on ‘racial preference,” says Dr. Manning Marable, Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University, New York City, ‘the overwhelming majority of those who are the chief beneficiaries of affirmative action are white women'” (“Jerry” 3).
Despite the fact that there are millions of women working- including married women and mothers with children, the gender equality doctrine espoused by Affirmative Action is now seeing a slowdown in women in America’s work force. Why is that?
Certainly the economy often mandates that both parents in a household work. Whether it’s the inflexibility of our nation’s labor laws or the hurdles for adequate child care, outdated laws make being a working mom more difficult than it should be…our major economic institutions – including tax law, labor law, and employee benefits law, as well as Social Security, and retirement policies – were designed for families with a full-time worker and a stay-at-home spouse. By comparison, they punish every other arrangement” (Strassel 4). B ut, the facts remain that Affirmative Action specifically gives employers not an option but almost an insistence on hiring women, over whiter men or black men. In 1986 the United State Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling on affirmative action. In it the majority held that an employer could give preference to women when making promotions” (Steiner 150). So, by law, women get a break, far exceeding that of black males.
Nevertheless, there are many who feel that women are not really benefiting from Affirmative Action and its various ensuing laws. “Affirmative action is an attempt to redistribute economic power by forcing employers to give preference to women. As with all schemes of distributing justice, choice is taken from individuals and given to social planners. Affirmative action has been a debacle. it has not cured sex segregation in the work place or closed the wage gap between men and women. More importantly, it has hindered the institution that has done the most to benefit women economically: the free market. (McElroy 1).
It is clear that there are statistics that confirm women’s progress, especially in professional jobs. Since the implementation of affirmative action programs in the military, education and employment programs over the past 30 years, women have made numerous quantifiable advances in the work place. The statistics posted on the National Council of Women’s Organizations Web site indicate that the proportion of female lawyers in the United States rose to 28 percent in 1998 from 5 percent in 1970. The comparable statistic for physicians was 41 percent in 1996, up sharply from 9 percent in 1970. In federal highway construction, women’s share of procurement dollars increased by 175 percent since 1987″ (Jonas 3).
It is important, in assuming the strengths and weaknesses and the accomplishments and failures of Affirmative Action , that the end result is not yet achieved. The objective is diversity that works. While affirmative action and equal employment opportunity focus on employment practices, the concept of diversity extends to the work environment, including individual attitudes and behaviors. Yet diversity… is a direct relationship between individual attitudes and behaviors, and employment practices” (Anon 2).
There are still people who claim that other diversity trends have improved diversity in the workplace, rather than giving Affirmative Action legislation the credit: “Detractors argue that the increases in minority and female employment are due to changes in social attitudes and conditions prompted by the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement rather than the “artificial” controls exerted by the government. They use this argument to claim that the anti-discrimination laws enacted in the wake of these movements makes affirmative action unnecessary” (Wood 17).
The problems still associated with workplace diversity and equity in the 21st century now focuses less on Affirmative Action legislation of some forty years ago but on the impact of immigration, legal and illegal, and the rise of the Hispanic minority in the U.S., which is causing some problems. We can never forget that the basic principle of Affirmative Action is merely a guideline- an invitation for fair employment and fair educational opportunities. It is not supposed to be a means of dismissing one race or gender to accommodate another. Women seem to have done better than blacks, but there is room for improvement both for gender and racial equity.
REFERENCES:
Anderson, B. E. “U.S. Still Not Colorblind, Gender-Neutral Society”, ThePhiladelphiaTribune, Aug 20, 1996
Brownfield, Allen C.: “Reverse Discrimination in Los Angeles”Human Events Magazine, July 1, 1994
Carlton, Melinda (and others) “Affirmative Action and Affirming Diversity: Has it been effective at the local level?” Public Management, Jan., 1997
Foster-Bey, John A. “Blacks Have Yet to Catch Up” World and I, Feb. 2003:
Jerry” (No last name provided): “HOW FEMINISTS KEEP BLACKS BEHIND WITH WORKPLACE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION” Male Matters battlinbog.blog-city.com/read/308541.htm
McElroy, Wendy: “What Does Affirmative Action Affirm” excerpted from Sexual Correctness: The Gender-Feminist Attack on Women, Jefferson NC: McFarland & Co. www.zetetics.com/mac/affirm.htm
Parks, S. and Godinez, V.: “Face of Workplace Yet to Reflect Society”DallasMorning News, Sept. .2, 2003
Price, Gilbert: “Affirmative Action under Heavy Fire” ClevelandCall and Post, Dec 7-13, 2006
Steiner, J. F.: “Industry, Society, and Change” McGraw-Hill, 1991
Strassel, K. Moms Find Balancing Work And Family Complicated By Outdated Laws;Book Shows Challenges Caused by Labor, Child Care Laws”USNewswire, May 10, 2006, n.p.
Varner, Lynne K., and Brune, Tom: “THE FUTURE OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: WHAT DOWHITES WANT?–MOST WHITES BELIEVE PROBLEMS OUTWEIGH PLUSES
But They’re Divided About How to Fix Things” Seattle Times, July 8, 1000
