Affirmative Action §

• Goals of a convention that does not rely on law, but on behavior of the state in all fields
• Methods
  • Temporary change of policy to shift balance
    • Ex: CEDAW want states to “Adopt temporary, special measures aimed at accellerating de facto equality between men and women, for instance, differential treatment in employment, education or housing.”
    • Give advantages to people who are disadvantages or discriminated against
      • Racism
      • Gender Equality or Women’s rights
      • Minority

Effectiveness of affirmative actions §

• In the US
  • What are the percentages of improvement
    • Representation
      • Women
      • Minority
    • Lowering of violence against women and minority
    • Most times, improvement in discrimination is only through ¹
      • Such as improvements in social justice through laws
      • Better education
      • Switch from agricultural work to industry work
    • Work place
      • From 1973 to 2003, the government policy in the has been increasing diversity in workplaces in the United States, according to a study in 2012.
        • female and minority representation increased, especially for federal contractors.
          • They were subject to equality regulations by the government themselves
      • Black and Native American workers were the “primary beneficiaries” of the policies.
  • Education: ²
    • The supreme court ruled in 2007 that race must not be a deciding factor in school enrollment, effectively ending the legal racial segragation of communities in schools.
• Is Affirmative action bringing enough benefits for to suffice it being utilized?
  • If Affirmative actions didn’t exist, would things be worse? Would situations be worse now than it would be without it in history?
  • What would be the realistic alternative to affirmative actions?
    • Is legal non-discrimination enough?
• Presidents and executive orders were really important steps and developments for affirmative actions ²
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt during the second world war signed an executive order to bring all hands on deck for workers of all ages, races, and backgrounds to work for the defense industry. Although the intention wasn’t to improve race integration in the workforce, it was an important first step.
  • President Dwight D. Eisenhower banned racial discriminative hiring in the federal government in 1953.
  • President John F. Kennedy’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity expanded on Roosevelt’s racial non-discriminative hiring to cover all federal contractors, not just in defense.
  • President Lyndon B. Johnson mandated that race, color, or origin must not be determinant of treatment in employment or the workplace as well, to which Nixon added disability and age as those protected criterias as well.

Question

• Was it only a US policy?
• Are you sure it’s caused by affirmative actions instead of general improvements in social progress

• To Read
  • Crackdown: Policing Detroit through the War on Drugs, Crime, and Youth · How Successful Was Affirmative Action? · Omeka Beta Service (umich.edu)

References §

Footnotes §

1. UNDP Human Development Report Office Occational Paper Background paper for HDR 2004 ↩

2. Affirmative Action Statistics and Facts After 50 Years - Lawyers Legal Guide By Michael Sera (justgreatlawyers.com) ↩ ↩²