Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action Essay

Affirmative action was originally designed to help minorities, but women especially white women have made the greatest gains as a result of these program. Affirmative action is a growing argument among our society. It is multifaceted and very often defined vaguely. Many people define affirmative action as the ability to strive for equality and inclusiveness. Others might see it as a quote based system for different minority groups.

In 1974, a woman named Rose was turned down for a supervisory job in favor of a male. She was told that she was the most qualified person, but the position was going to be filled by a man because he had a family to support. Five years before that, when Rose was about to fill an entry level position in banking a personnel officer outlined the woman's pay scale which was $25 to $50 month less than what men were being paid for the same position. Rose was furious because she felt this was discriminating to her. She confronted the personnel officer and he saw nothing wrong with it. Thanks to affirmative action today things like these situations are becoming more rare and corrected more quickly. Affirmative action has definitely helped women and minorities in their careers, but it has yet to succeed in the goal of equality to the fullest for the business world to women and minorities. Some observers argue that women have made huge strides with the help of affirmative action. They now hold 40 percent of all corporate middle management jobs and the number of women-owned businesses has grown by 57 percent since 1982.

Affirmative action was designed to give qualified minorities a chance to compete on equal footing with whites. Equal opportunities for the blacks has remained more wishful thinking than fact. Black students are continuing to struggle to seek an education and black business owners are still competing against their White counterparts. Black workers are experiencing an unemployment rate twice that of Whites and hold dead end labor intensive low paying jobs.

The employment outlook for minorities is grim, but not hopeless. We definitely need affirmative action to overcome the disparities of employment