When affirmative action wasn't white
When affirmative action wasn't white—lecture outline
What is affirmative action? Does affirmative action help those it was intended to help? Does affirmative action hurt white men? Is affirmative action an affront to the American ideal of meritocracy?
When affirmative action wasn't white—lecture outline
What is affirmative action? Does affirmative action help those it was intended to help? Does affirmative action hurt white men? Is affirmative action an affront to the American ideal of meritocracy?
Affirmative action is not new ◦ In 1641, jurisdictions that would later become the first states began to specify in law that rights to property, ownership of goods and services, and the right to vote would be restricted by race and gender. ◦ Affirmative action has been in effect for 360 years. What is new is nonwhite and non-male affirmative action.
Definition of affirmative action
Affirmative action(in its current nonwhite and non-male form and practices) ◦ Is an umbrella term ◦ Refers to a collection of policies and practices. ◦ Designed to address past wrongs, institutional racism, and sexism. ◦ Offers people of color and women both employment and educational opportunities.
Definition of affirmative action
Affirmative action encourages employers seeking to create integrated institutions to consider race, ethnicity, and gender in their hiring, admittance, and other decisions.
Definition of affirmative action
Seek proactively to: ◦ redress historical patterns of domination ◦ combat present-day discrimination ◦ ensure equal access to opportunities
Types of affirmative action ◦ Quotas (extremely rare) ◦ Taking positive steps against racial domination ◦ "preference systems" or systems of "social restitution“ Gives qualified white women and nonwhite women and men a slight advantage over equally qualified man in hiring and promotion
◦ Recruitment strategies that target underrepresented groups ◦ Self-examination programs, where employers scrutinize the workplace representation
Examples of affirmative action:
Examples of affirmative action: ◦ School busing ◦ Race-based outreach ◦ Setting aside contracts for nonwhite and female run firms ◦ Monitoring workforce underrepresentation of people of color and women
History of affirmative action
Executive order criminalizing racial discrimination (1941) ◦ Modern-day affirmative-action programs can be traced back to 1941 ◦ Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt criminalized racial discrimination in government and war industries. ◦ His executive order was largely ignored, because it carried no sanctions violators.
History of affirmative action
Executive Order 10925 (1961) ◦ Issued by Pres. John F. Kennedy ◦ Affirmative action coined by Kennedy ◦ Mandated that federal contractors take proactive steps – that is, "affirmative action" -to treat prospective and current workers equally, regardless of race, color, or national origin.
History of affirmative action
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 Title VII forbade employers from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, religion, color, or national origin.
History of affirmative action
Executive Order 11246 (1965) ◦ Issued by Pres. Johnson ◦ Added women to the list of protected groups ◦ Created the Office for Federal Contract Compliance (which would later become the Office for Federal Contract Compliance Programs, OFCCP).
History of affirmative action
President Nixon ◦ Required firms with at least $50,000 in federal contracts and at least 50 employees to submit written affirmative action plans accompanied by benchmarks and timetables.
Federally mandated affirmative action rules application
Federally mandated affirmative action rules apply only to companies that conduct a fair amount of business with the federal government ◦ About 3% of American firms ◦ Firms employing about 20% of the country's workforce
OFCCP guidelines
Quotas are illegal A contractor is never required: ◦ to hire a person who does not have the qualifications needed to perform the job successfully ◦ to hire an unqualified person in preference to another person who is qualified to hire a less qualified person in preference to a more qualified person
Implementation of affirmative action
71% of firms have some sort of affirmative action plan Less than half practice affirmative action
When affirmative action wasn't white—lecture outline
What is affirmative action? Does affirmative action help those it was intended to help? Does affirmative action hurt white men? Is affirmative action an affront to the American ideal of meritocracy?
Does affirmative action help those it was intended to help? Affirmative action significantly increased the representation of white women and nonwhite women and men in employment. Decreased the levels of occupational segregation by impressive margins.
Does affirmative action help those it was intended to help?
Firms that contracted with the federal government in 1980 (and thereby were subjected to federally mandated affirmative action programs) increased their nonwhite workforce by 25% more than firms who did not. Big-city firms that took affirmative action measures in hiring were 10% more likely to hire women and 20% more likely to hire black men than firms who did not.
Does affirmative action help those it was intended to help? The military carried out a successful affirmative action campaign to recruit nonwhites into commanding ranks. Between 1970 and 1990 the number of nonwhite men and women and white women in the police force rose dramatically: from 10,000 to 97,000 for nonwhites, and from 2000 to 20,000 for women.
Affirmative action helps nonwhite communities
Affirmative action programs have helped to produce hundreds of nonwhite doctors. They were much more likely to practice in nonwhite communities than their white counterparts.
Affirmative action and self-esteem
Some evidence suggests that affirmative action has helped, not handicapped, the self-esteem of nonwhite women and men as well as white women. ◦ By expanding their occupational opportunities ◦ Raising aspirations ◦ If nonwhite women and men and white women are wracked by self-doubt, the source is most likely not affirmative action but centuries of white supremacy and patriarchy
Affirmative action and job performance
Several studies examining job performance evaluations have concluded that affirmative action hires do just as well as those not hired by affirmative action. ◦ Some have found that black women consistently outperformed white males working in similar positions. ◦ One study of police officers hired through affirmative action found that they perform at the level of white male police officers.
Affirmative action and firm performance
Firms operating with affirmative action protocols perform no differently (in terms of profit margins, growth, and so forth) than firms that do not. Some research suggests that companies with solid affirmative action plans reap bigger profit margins than companies with poor records of recruiting women and nonwhites.
Affirmative action and class Some social scientists have argued that affirmative action selects out the most privileged members of disadvantaged populations. A large proportion of nonwhites lacking qualifications – a good education, job training, network connections – virtually are unaffected by affirmative action.
When affirmative action wasn't white—lecture outline
What is affirmative action? Does affirmative action help those it was intended to help? Does affirmative action hurt white men? Is affirmative action an affront to the American ideal of meritocracy?
Does affirmative action hurt white men? When whites were asked who was most likely to face discrimination at work, survey respondents picked whites over blacks by two to one. 40% of people participating in a recent poll thought that whites being disadvantaged by affirmative action was a bigger problem than blacks being disadvantaged by race-based discrimination.
Does affirmative action hurt white men? The evidence suggests not.
Findings from social scientific studies demonstrate that employers regularly pass over equally or better qualified nonwhites to hire whites. Compared to nonwhites, whites are much less likely to believe they were denied a job promotion on account of their race.
◦ One study found that 16% of blacks and 8% of Hispanics claim to have been refused pay increases or promotions because of their race; only 3% of whites felt likewise.
Whites rarely file complaints citing "reverse discrimination" Of the nearly half million complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission between 1987 in 1990, only 4% were reverse discrimination cases. Between 1990 and 1994, there were 100 claims of reverse discrimination filed by white men; there were over 150,000 claims filed by women and nonwhites in 1994 alone Courts reject most reverse discrimination cases. Indeed, between 1990 and 1994, district and appellate courts rejected all reverse discrimination cases as without merit.
Affirmative action may help white men
Affirmative action may help white men.
◦ This is because affirmative action provides discipline and structure to employment practices that previously operated willy-nilly, relying heavily on personal connections.
When affirmative action wasn't white—lecture outline
What is affirmative action? Does affirmative action help those it was intended to help? Does affirmative action hurt white men? Is affirmative action an affront to the American ideal of meritocracy?
It's affirmative action an affront to American meritocracy?
This idea relies on three assumptions:
◦ The first is that people get ahead in life solely by virtue of their own talents and work ethic. ◦ This is rarely the case.
It's affirmative action an affront to American meritocracy? ◦ The second assumption is that race and gender preferences are the only kinds of preferences in the world. ◦ There are hundreds of other kinds of preferences
E.g., sons who inherited their father’s business E.g., legacies admitted to Ivy League universities because the parents are contributing alumni E.g., homeowners who enjoy tax breaks
It's affirmative action an affront to American meritocracy?
◦ The third assumption holds employment practices without affirmative action are more merit-based than those with it. ◦ Evidence documenting ongoing racial discrimination challenges the assumption.
It's affirmative action an affront to American meritocracy?
The choice is not between meritocracy and affirmative action, it is between discrimination and affirmative action.
Discussion: What do you think?
When affirmative action wasn't white—lecture outline
What is affirmative action? Does affirmative action help those it was intended to help? Does affirmative action hurt white men? Is affirmative action an affront to the American ideal of meritocracy?
