Equal Opportunity

What It Means

The United States and other countries officially aspire to provide every citizen with an equal chance of obtaining an education and a job and of being treated fairly on the job and in life generally. This aspiration is encapsulated in the term “equal opportunity,” which is most commonly used to refer to a company or organization’s hiring and business practices. In the United States it is illegal for companies or organizations that employ more than 15 people to discriminate based on race, sex, religion, color, national origin, disability, or age. In all their dealings with employees (hiring, firing, promoting, setting wages, allotting vacation time, etc.), employers must enforce state and federal guidelines regarding equal opportunity.

Equal opportunity became a pressing national goal during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, prior to which African Americans were subject to widespread mistreatment and unfairness, particularly when it came to voting, education, and employment. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed at the urging of President Lyndon B. Johnson, gave the federal government the power to stop discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (the act consisted of different sections or “titles,” each of which focused on a particular subject important to the larger goal of equality) dealt specifically with employment and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency that investigates situations in which individuals claim they have been subject to discriminatory treatment.

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Title VII has been supplemented by numerous state and federal laws that have updated the original protections and widened the scope of equal opportunity to defend the rights of such groups as disabled and older workers. Additionally, Title VII has been the basis of the practice known as affirmative action, according to which the government requires employers to diversify their workforce by giving preferential treatment, in the hiring process, to women and minority groups. While there have always been some critics of equal opportunity in general, affirmative action in particular has been by far the most controversial portion of the government’s drive to promote fairness and equality.

When Did It Begin

While the Civil Rights Movement brought the issue of equal opportunity to the forefront of American politics and culture, the roots for the goals of the movement go back to 1868 when, following the abolition of slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed. The Fourteenth Amendment promises “equal protection under the law”: in other words, all citizens were to be treated fairly by the government. In practice, however, this did not happen. African Americans were systematically mistreated, often with the knowledge or direct cooperation of government. So-called Jim Crow laws in the southern United States mandated separate public facilities and educational systems for African Americans, and on a national level employers did not commonly make any effort to promote equality when it came to hiring employees. Though minority groups as well as groups concerned with justice continually tried to force societal change based on the promises of the Fourteenth Amendment, it was not until 1954 that a major victory came. In the court case Brown v. Board of Education of that year, the Supreme Court explicitly forbade the segregation of schools by race. This provided the spark that ignited the Civil Rights Movement.

Equal opportunity in employment became a key part of the broader Civil Rights Movement. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order establishing equal opportunity in competing for government jobs. The crowning achievement of the Civil Rights Movement was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the act outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin. Title VII of the act set guidelines for employers and established the EEOC, which was empowered to investigate claims of unfairness. The Civil Rights Act went into effect in 1965.

More Detailed Information

The concept of equal opportunity is closely connected to basic beliefs in what kind of country the United States should be. U.S. citizens like to believe that their country is a meritocracy, a society in which those who succeed do so because of ability and hard work. This belief has always been a simplistic view of the reality of life in the United States, however. While there has never been a class of aristocrats (people whose ancestry entitles them to occupy a privileged place in society) in the United States, wealth can be handed down from one generation to the next. This means that equal opportunity has never been strictly possible, because inherited wealth necessarily tilts the scales in favor of certain people. Two children with identical abilities and work ethics, for instance, cannot be said to enjoy equal opportunity if one of them is born wealthy and the other poor.

But most Americans see a difference between this form of inequality, which does not occur because of active wrongdoing, and the racial and gender inequality that existed for roughly 200 years after the country’s founding. The systems of slavery (in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and segregation (in the late nineteenth through the late twentieth century) actively promoted discrimination against African Americans. Likewise, women at all levels of society were subject to a wide range of discriminatory laws and customs. When people of certain races, or when women, are prohibited from participating fully in society, then an obvious inequality of opportunity exists.

The system of equal-opportunity laws that grew out of the Civil Rights Movement seeks to correct these and other forms of inequality. The most accepted way in which these laws have functioned is by setting standards for employers. Those employing 15 or more employees must, if they want to stay in business, ensure that they do not display any biases against prospective or current employees because of factors such as race, religion, color, gender, national origin, age, or disability. In practice, however, identifying biases is not always a simple matter.

If, for example, someone born in another country is fired from his job as a computer programmer in the United States, he might believe he was fired because of his national origin, while his boss might argue that he was fired for poor performance. If this employee feels strongly about the matter, he might contact the EEOC and file a complaint about his employer. The EEOC would then investigate the matter to determine whether or not national origin played a role in the employee’s firing. If the agency found that national origin did play a role in the firing, it might attempt to mediate between the employer and the employee. In the event that no agreement could be reached between the two parties, the EEOC might file a lawsuit against the company.

Recent Trends

Companies, of course, want to avoid the potentially costly attentions of the EEOC. It is common today for large companies to have entire departments and substantial portions of their operating budgets devoted to making sure that the work environment is fair to employees regardless of their race, religion, color, gender, national origin, age, or disability. These so-called “race-blind” or “gender-blind” policies (policies that attempt to get people to look beyond categories such as race and gender) have been widely accepted by the American public despite the effort and expense they impose upon businesses.

Since the Civil Rights era, another major way in which the federal government and state governments have attempted to promote equal opportunity is through affirmative action. Affirmative action means giving preferential treatment to certain groups in matters of education and employment. Especially in the area of university admissions, racial minorities have benefited from affirmative action. But whether or not the increase in racial diversity at universities has promoted equal opportunity remained a subject of debate among experts as well as ordinary people at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the legal status of affirmative action was likewise coming under increased scrutiny.