Affirmative action began in the mid-1960s as a supplement to the Civil Rights Act's promise to end race discrimination in employment. It applied a principle announced by President Lyndon Johnson at Howard University on June 4, 1965: "We seek ... not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result." Concerned that ending formal discrimination would not by itself eliminate racism in employment decisions, President Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 in September 1965, calling upon employers who received federal contracts to take extra steps to integrate their work forces.
Under the executive order, which is still in effect, federal contractors were required to search aggressively for qualified people of color to apply for job vacancies. Following appeals from U.S. Women's Bureau chief Esther Peterson and from women's groups, President Johnson added gender to the executive order in 1967. Also in 1967, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) included race-based affirmative action in higher education in its enforcement plan for Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. With passage of Title IX of the Education Act Amendments of 1972, HEW (now the Department of Education) began to monitor college and university hiring and admissions practices affecting women.
Affirmative action is a means, not an end. It is primarily a recruitment mechanism to incorporate people of color and white women into the social institutions that historically have excluded them. Affirmative action establishes the expectation that employers and educational institutions will open consideration for hiring and admissions to all qualified applicants and will encourage applications from members of underrepresented groups. Some schools and employers engage in affirmative action voluntarily because it promotes academic freedom, is good for business, or shows a good-faith interest in preventing discrimination.
Government also may enforce affirmative action by making it a condition of federal funding. For example, under Executive Order 11246, private businesses that contract with the federal government must demonstrate an effort to attract representative applicant pools for jobs created by their federal contracts. This form of required affirmative action emphasizes procedures rather than results: training for potential applicants, wide advertising, open searches. Affirmative action procedures also include treating the race and/or gender of qualified applicants from underrepresented groups as factors in employment or university admissions decisions.
Affirmative action does not require an employer to hire a woman for a specific job; and it does not require a college to admit a person of color because of her race. Affirmative action does not usually require particular outcomes. Exceptions have been "set-aside" programs for small businesses contracting in the public sector, incentive subsidies to encourage primary contractors to subcontract with minority businesses, and affirmative action plans imposed by courts to remedy individual employer violations of the Civil Rights Act. In most cases, however, affirmative action plans spell out voluntary goals and timetables for integrating workers and students from underrepresented groups into workplaces and schools. Goals and timetables give employers and universities a framework to develop recruitment strategies, adding race and gender to the mix of considerations that determine hiring and admissions decisions.
Set-asides, incentive subsidies, and court-ordered affirmative action plans have been constitutionally challenged since the mid-1970s. In 1978, a divided Supreme Court ruled in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke that racial quotas are impermissible in public higher education. However, the Court went on to say that affirmative action programs to promote diversity are valid. Through the 1980s, the Court upheld all forms of federal affirmative action programs. But in 1989, it found a local program in violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution (City of Richmond v. Croson).
During the 1980s and 1990s, affirmative action became a volatile political issue, as many whites came to view any effort to expand opportunities available to people of color as a cap on their own opportunities. Debates raged about whether it is ever acceptable to take into account race and/or gender in deciding among qualified applicants. In 1995, the Supreme Court brought all race-conscious affirmative action under heightened judicial suspicion in a case challenging a federal incentive program for disadvantaged minority-owned businesses. Adarand v. Pena announced a new constitutional presumption that remedial race-consciousness is as offensive as oppressive race-consciousness—that both represent invidious discrimination. The Court did not discuss whether or how its new approach will apply to gender-conscious affirmative action.
The decision has fueled a roiling political controversy over race- and gender-conscious affirmative action. Now under special scrutiny are programs based on goals and timetables rather than set-asides and incentives, particularly in education. To critics, affirmative action destroys the rule of merit. In their view, merit is properly measured by the numerical rating of applicants through standardized test scores and grades, or, in the case of businesses, through competitive bidding. Affirmative action foes believe that when numerical rankings are balanced against social factors, unqualified or less qualified individuals steal college admission from "the best" students, good jobs from deserving workers, and business contracts from the lowest bidder. They argue that opportunity must be color- and gender-blind to be truly equal whether or not white and male prejudices, habits, and institutional practices continue to circumscribe the life chances of people of color and women.
Advocates for affirmative action do not slight the value of merit but do disagree that merit alone should determine the distribution of entry-level opportunity. According to its advocates, affirmative action is necessary to ensure that people with power over hiring and admissions do not disregard the merits of white women and people of color. Advocates also want to expand the meaning of merit to include the ways life's struggles—against sexism and racism—modulate ability and enrich each individual's contribution to her job, school, or community.
Affirmative action has been an effective instrument of opportunity. It has offered both white women and women and men of color a foot in the door to social and economic institutions from which they were barred either by habit or design only a generation ago. It has recognized and cultivated role models for hope and aspiration in younger generations. It has provided the tools for white women and people of color to seek entry into workplaces previously monopolized by white men.
Although originally conceived as a remedy for the effects of past discrimination, affirmative action counters the effects of and works to prevent continuing racism and sexism. For example, in the employment arena, Executive Order 11246 requires firms with federal contracts to develop plans for creating a more representative work force, to develop plans for achieving their goals, and to report annually on their progress. This keeps employers aware of the prejudices and practices that continue to exclude underrepresented groups from due consideration and encourages employers to struggle self-consciously against them.
Affirmative action is changing police forces, fire departments, and industrial employment. It is changing the face of the professions. In 1980, 13 percent of all doctors and 14 percent of all lawyers were women; in 1996, the numbers were 23 percent and 31 percent. It is changing the face of managerial jobs. In 1980, white men occupied 65 percent of all management jobs; in 1996, they occupied 50 percent. Affirmative action is not by itself a prescription for equality, nor is it self-enforcing. Affirmative action's success has depended upon the goodwill of the people who make employment and admissions decisions. But affirmative action has opened doors to white men's world, thereby beginning the slow process of democratizing opportunity in the United States.
Gwendolyn Mink
See also
Civil Rights Act of 1964;
Civil Rights Movement.
