Affirmative Action

10 Pages 2570 Words

ver, it seems that affirmative action is becoming a form of reverse discrimination and therefore it needs to be ended.
In order to discuss how affirmative action was put into legislation, we must review the events that helped launch the civil rights movement in this country. Up until 1954, the separate but equal institutions were legally acceptable; however, the Supreme Court decided in the case of Brown v. Board of Education that segregating schooling based upon race was unconstitutional. In 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested and fined for not moving to the back of a public bus, setting a pattern of boycotts by blacks of bus companies. During the incident in 1957, President Eisenhower had to call federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, after the state’s governor, George Wallace forcibly barred black children from entering white school. The government responded to those incidents by passing new laws, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Briggs, p.195). The Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibits any form of racial discrimination in employment purposes. This was the start of affirmative action for America. However, in 1961 President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which stated that the contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin (Berman, p.513). Following the Executive order, the Civil Rights Act was passed, including Title VII that prohibited employment discrimination on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Within one year, another Executive Order was developed and delivered by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. Executive Order 11246 instructed con...