_Do white Males have anything to Fear From Affirmative Action _
By: Chad
Do white males have anything to fear from Affirmative Action? Affirmative
Action can be defined as policies used in the United States to increase
opportunities for minorities by favoring them in hiring and promotion, college
admissions, and the awarding of government contracts. Depending upon the
situation, minorities might include any underrepresented group, especially
one defined by race, ethnicity, or gender. This action constitutes a good
faith effort by employees to address past and/or present discrimination
through a variety of specific, results-oriented procedures. This is a step
beyond equal opportunity laws that simply ban discriminatory practicesThere
are four main types of affirmative action that an employer may use. They
include: · Aggressive recruiting to expand the pool of candidates for job
openings; · Evaluating and updating selection tools and criteria to ensure
their relevance to job performance; · Revising traditional measures of merit
to more fully recognize talent and performance under varying conditions;
· Establishing goals and timetables for hiring underrepresented groups These
are not the only ways that employers use to complement the affirmative action
but they are the more favorable ways to attack the problem of discrimination
in the workplace From its beginnings in the United States in the 1960s,
affirmative action has been highly controversial. Critics charge that
affirmative action policies, which give preferential treatment to people based
on their membership in a group, violate the principal that all individuals are
equal under the law. These critics argue that it is unfair to discriminate
against members of one group today to compensate for discrimination against
other groups in the past. They regard affirmative action as a form of reverse
discrimination that unfairly prevents whites and men from being hired and
promoted Affirmative action is not a mechanism of discrimination, but a tool
for combating discrimination. Reverse discrimination is illegal under
existing civil rights law that protects people of all races and both genders
from discrimination. Of more than 90,000 complaints of employment
discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1994,
less than 3% of involved allegations of reverse discrimination against white
males. In a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor they found that,
of more than 3,000 reported federal court cases alleging discrimination from
mid-1990 to mid-1994, fewer than 100 alleged reverse discrimination. Further,
only six of those 100 cases were resolved in favor of white men alleging
reverse discrimination. Courts find that the vast majority of reverse
discrimination cased were without merit and that several were brought by white
men who appeared to be less qualified than the minorities who were hired or
promoted The Labor Department study report also stated: Many of the cases
were the result of a disappointed applicant& erroneously assuming that when a
women or minority got the job, it was because of race or sex, not
qualification. Millions of white males benefit directly from affirmative
action and studies show that reverse discrimination is extremely rare. When
it does occur, its legitimate victims are protected under existing civil
rights laws and may seek justification through government agencies or the
courts
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