Effectiveness of affirmative action programs

And when it is all done, many people feel a great sense of relief, and think that they are finished with the affirmative action plan AAP until next year. But, wait! Not so fast! Getting the Plan done is important, but it is just the beginning.

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs OFCCP in the US Department of Labor enforces the laws and regulations for affirmative action programs for covered Government contractors — companies that have contracts to provide goods or services to agencies of the Executive Branch of the federal government.

Under these laws and regulations, contractors are required to develop and maintain written affirmative action programs for each of its establishments , and update them annually. This could include everything from internal and external job posting, special or targeted recruiting, establishing and maintaining relationships with organizations representing protected group members, company-sponsored training and development programs, and pay equity programs.

Contractors are required to put in place a system to measure the effectiveness of the affirmative action program. This list is not all inclusive, but is representative of program areas that OFCCP commonly investigates during Compliance Evaluations:.

Contractors must include the Equal Opportunity clause in every subcontract or purchase order so that the subcontractor or vendor may become aware of its compliance obligations. It is a common practice during a compliance evaluation to be asked for a copy of a current subcontract or purchase order to verify that it contains the current EO Clause or language incorporating it by reference.

Contractors must include in their advertisements for employment a nondiscrimination statement :. Self-Identification is the preferred method for obtaining demographic information for applicants and employees. Covered federal Government contractors with 50 or more employees must file the EEO-1 report annually. The data for the report is a workforce snapshot between October 1 and December The filing date is March 31 of the following year.

Affirmative action was developed in the s to address racial inequality and racial exclusion in American society. Colleges and universities wanted to be seen as forward-thinking on issues of race. Then, in the late s, affirmative action went to the United States Supreme Court. There, the only justification accepted, by Justice Powell, was the compelling state interest in a diverse student body in which everyone benefits from a range of perspectives in the classroom.

Today, when colleges talk about affirmative action, they rarely mention the issue of inequality, or even of a diverse leadership. Instead, they focus on the need for a diverse student body in which everyone benefits from a range of perspectives in the classroom. This justification, which ignored equity, leads to some unexpected, troubling expectations on the part of white students. They find that black students who probably benefited from affirmative action — because their achievement data is lower than the average student at their colleges — do better in the long-run than their peers who went to lower-status universities and probably did not benefit from affirmative action.

The ones who benefited are more likely to graduate college and to earn professional degrees, and they have higher incomes. So affirmative action acts as an engine for social mobility for its direct beneficiaries. This in turn leads to a more diverse leadership, which you can see steadily growing in the United States. But what about other students — whites and those from a higher economic background? Decades of research in higher education show that classmates of the direct beneficiaries also benefit.

These students have more positive racial attitudes toward racial minorities, they report greater cognitive capacities, they even seem to participate more civically when they leave college. None of these changes would have happened without affirmative action. States that have banned affirmative action can show us that. California, for example, banned affirmative action in the late s, and at the University of California, Berkeley, the percentage of black undergraduates has fallen from 6 percent in to only 3 percent in Decades of research in higher education show that classmates of the direct beneficiaries of affirmative also benefit.

They have more positive racial attitudes toward racial minorities, they report greater cognitive capacities, they even seem to participate more civically when they leave college.

It indicates what the administration thinks, and how it might act. Minority gaps can be reduced because there are more opportunities available to receive a higher education. These efforts can help to finally break the glass ceilings that have held so many people back for far too long. It reverses societal loss. In the United States, it could be argued that minority groups are at a societal disadvantage because of their historical treatment. Through slavery and oppression, minority households over the course of generations have not had the same opportunities to build wealth.

A program like Affirmative Action can help those minority households begin to reverse the societal losses they have experienced. It promotes discrimination in reverse. If the goal is to eliminate discrimination from a society, then offering a program that promotes discrimination is not the way to go about doing so. Giving one person preference over another because of their minority status instead of their qualifications is the wrong perspective, especially in quota-based systems.

Searching for a diverse group of qualified candidates and having programming to promote that search lessens the promotion of discrimination. It still reinforces stereotypes. Any time a program exists that allows someone to obtain a position in a school or a workplace, a foundation of minority-based stereotypes can be built. For such a program to succeed, it must come from a viewpoint of pure equality. Diversity can be just as bad as it can be good.

Diversity for the sake of having it provides little benefit to a school or business. There must be a purpose to seeking out a diverse environment for it to be beneficial. When a program like Affirmative Action exists, the goal of the program tends to slide toward meeting expectations or regulations instead of seeking out highly qualified people. If that slide occurs, diversity can hurt more than it can help. It changes accountability standards. Equality means giving everyone the same fair chance at the beginning of a journey.

Instead of focusing on socioeconomic issues, we can shift our focus toward creating better educational opportunities in every neighborhood in the US.