affirmative action

affirmative action (USA) Initiated as US government policy by President Johnson in 1965, when he created the Office of Federal Contract Compliance and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Through these bureaus, affirmative action was designed to reduce social inequalities in US society by requiring all federal government contractors as well as public institutions to give consideration to racial minorities and, from 1971, to women. In 1978 the policy was given an ambiguous verdict by the Supreme Court in Bakke v. University of California, when the court confirmed the policy as constitutional while deciding at the same time that the use of quotas to favour minorities violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which secured the citizens' equal protection before the law. However, in the case of United Steel Workers of America v. Weber (1979), the Supreme Court went further by deciding that in training programmes, preference to Blacks could be given as long as this did not bar Whites from advancement. During the 1980s and particularly the 1990s, popular opposition to affirmative action increased, and was reflected in a series of Supreme Court rulings in the mid-1990s which limited or narrowed its scope. In 1996, California voters adopted Proposition 209, which abolished any preference in its hiring policies on the basis of race, sex, colour, ethnicity, or national origin. In response, employers such as the University of California, which had always been at the forefront of affirmative action, introduced a new system of admission based on ‘comprehensive review’. This took into account a candidate's educational opportunities at high school, and in this way employed more sensitive measures of discrimination ensuring continuous above-average access to minorities candidates.

Civil Rights Acts (US); civil rights movement