Affirmative action was first introduced by President Kennedy in 1961 with Executive Order 10925. This was intended to “ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” President Johnson then issued Order 11246, which prohibited employment discrimination based on Kennedy’s criteria, with a later modification to also include gender. The provisions included a requirement that federal contractors employing over 50 people and with contracts over $50,000, there must be a written nondiscrimination policy that included goals for employment of women and minorities and the policies that would achieve these goals. Specifically, there were requirements that those who were traditionally discriminated against received the same promotions and raises in the workplace and the same college admissions, scholarships, and financial aid. This policy aimed to level the playing field between those who had been discriminated against and those who had not, but soon, there were questions over whether these policies were actually enforcing reverse segregation. The most famous court case on the matter was Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978. Alan Bakke argued that he was a victim of reverse discrimination because he had been rejected from medical school for two years in a row in favor of less qualified minority applicants. The school in question, UC Davis, had been upholding a quota of 16% minority students, and while the Supreme Court ruled that the use of rigid quotas was not permissible, it upheld the principle of affirmative action.
Despite this decision, significant backlash against affirmative action continued, as some white males felt that they were being hurt by the policy because it unfairly favored minorities. In a country known for its opportunities and spirit of individualism and self-reliance, these people argue that minorities and even women are getting a “free ride” to success with perceived preferential treatment. However, these protests do not necessarily take into account the difficulties that minorities may face in contrast to whites in achieving their goals, and it is fairly recently that the civil rights movement sparked ongoing changes that would improve the status of African Americans and inspire other movements. While current political polarization can force people to take rigid sides of the issue, it is often not as clear cut as it may seem. For example in the 1986 case of Wygant v Jackson, a school district laid off white teachers with seniority in order to maintain minority teachers who did not have seniority. This went against the previous agreement in the school district that teachers with the most seniority would not be laid off. More recently, the case of Grutter v Bollinger upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan, and while it was widely regarded as a victory for affirmative action, details of the ruling which outlawed specific quotas were interpreted to mean that schools could get rid of programs specifically designed to identify and recruit minorities. This resulted in a large drop in the number of minority students and many of the schools that dropped the programs in question, and the effects of this more recent ruling only adds complexity to the issue affirmative action programs in America.
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