Blog 4

With our new president-elect Donald Trump soon coming into office (I’ll be out of the country, praise) there is much talk swirling around the changed he’ll make. One in particular that pertains to civil rights in Memphis is affirmative action. This lead me to delve deeper into the importance of why this issue should not be a debate. We can begin with President Lyndon Johnson who summed it up in 1965, stating "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say you are free to compete with all the others, and still just believe that you have been completely fair."

The emphasis is on opportunity: affirmative action programs are meant to break down barriers, both visible and invisible, to level the playing field, and to make sure everyone is given an equal break. They are not meant to guarantee equal results -- but instead proceed on the common-sense notion that if equality of opportunity were a reality, African Americans, women, people with disabilities and other groups facing discrimination would be fairly represented in the nation's workforce and educational institutions.

The debate over affirmative action is merely a debate of people who have different views on how we should treat people who are not white males. This discussion centers on a number of questions: to what extent discrimination and bias persist, especially in a systematic way; to what degree affirmative action programs have been effective in providing otherwise unavailable opportunities in education, employment, and business; and to what extent affirmative action programs appear to unduly benefit African Americans at the expense of the white majority.

The continuing need for affirmative action is demonstrated by the data. For example, the National Asian and Pacific American Legal Consortium reports that although white men make up only 48% of the college-educated workforce, they hold over 90% of the top jobs in the news media, 96% of CEO positions, 86% of law firm partnerships, and 85% of tenured college faculty positions.

Affirmative action is not, as some critics charge, a uniquely modern concept fashioned by liberals in defiance of history or tradition. Although the techniques that we now call "affirmative action" are of fairly recent design, the recognition of the need to take affirmative, or positive legal action to redress discrimination, rather than simply ending discrimination, has been around since the Civil War.