Equal Civil Rights In American History
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The citizens of the United States of America have continually suffered for their persisting conflict of equal civil rights. Over time, as the result over the fight for civil rights, we have discriminated, abused, persecuted and killed fellow Americans over such issues as equal civil rights. As American citizens had primarily intended to form a country in which it denied Americans equal rights, ultimately it became the principal factor as to why the empowerment of such equal rights is a result of individualism rather than nationalism.
The original plan in American history was to continue on with the segregation of all, but instead, diversity was awarded to being able to bring the inter-racial equality to all citizens of the United States. The key role in creating such diversity over the past forty years has been affirmative action. Affirmative action is defined as “sweeping measures by the federal government to help bring about the economic improvement of the African Americans and, later, that of other minority groups” (Marger, 282). The original intention of affirmative action was to compensate previously discriminated Americans, mainly African Americans, and ensure that all past harms and any future harm ceased. Unfortunately, since the beginning of affirmative action, it was primarily intended to benefit blacks, the majority of the “minority and women-owned businesses favored by government preferences are owned by groups other than blacks” (Sowell, 121). Could this whole policy be considered a hypocritical hypothesis in the sense that here the government of America is intending to create a program that is meant to solelyncie benefit the racially discriminated blacks who are living in America, and yet at the same time, the very program that the United States government proposed wasnt even benefiting blacks, but women and other minorities of America. Because of the fact that African Americans were the most widely discriminated against ethnicity in the United States, we will leave aside the fact that as far back as American history can date, “religious discrimination existed in much of colonial America” and “indigenous American Indians were also subject to different” forms of racial and ethnic discrimination (Sowell, 116). Here, the need for affirmative action is undoubtedly evident. As a result of such, there have been, and still are, several positive and negative effects to the American people.
Marger goes on to say that from a result of the newly instituted affirmative action policies, “they stipulated that those doing business with the federal government…were required to take steps to increase their minority representation and to establish goals and timetables to meet that objective” (Marger, 282). Is it possible to hypothesize that maybe the minorities did in fact advance too much through American history? Are we just promoting or hiring minorities of all ethnicities, just to fulfill the newly instituted affirmative action requirements by our government?
As it would be safe to say that only many white males would begin to argue that stance, it isnt apparently evident if in fact that is the situation or not. Coming from the “Pro-Affirmative action” side, one would begin to say that “those who favor affirmative action build their case on a few critical points; namely, that these policies have accomplished what they were intended to do and that their need is still evident” (Marger, 282). The whole purpose of instituting this was just for this purpose, then by advancing many females, blacks or Hispanics in this day in age, obviously fulfills this requirement. However, on the contrary, coming from the “Anti-Affirmative action” side, they say that “these programs have become a kind of reverse discrimination in which those previously discriminated against are given preference over others merely on the basis of ethnicity” (Marger, 283). Many would begin to take a stance to justify the fact that with the overall expansion of affirmative action programs over the years that the “failure to have statistical representativeness among employers can be equated with job discrimination… with the burden of proof…falling on the employer” (Sowell, 116). Taking this into account, it is more believable that in fact reverse discrimination does happen more often than not because of the Government mandated hiring process. Which would be more important to a very well to do prosperous business in the American corporate elite world? A white male who has plenty of experience and credentials to fulfill the position, or an African American male who has equally amount of credentials to fulfill the position, but not the necessary amount of experience. Here you would be inclined to believe that the CEO of this very prosperous business would undoubtedly by all means favor the hiring of the white male who has a lot of experience and also fulfills the credential requirements, but due to the fact that the government has mandated such strict hiring policies, the corporation has no choice but to go with the African American male. Here we can justify the point of how the idea that minorities have advanced too far the corporate world.
In order to better understand the initial concept of affirmative action, there were legal obstacles that would first need to be analyzed, as well as policies from the courts that would need to be looked at to better allow the citizens of America to better understand these concepts of affirmative action. “The central statute in this evolution was the Civil Rights Act of 1964” (Sowell, 116). As for the purpose of this essay, we are mainly concerned with the correlation between affirmative action and African Americans, we do know that affirmative action in past history was to not only help protect African Americans, but also other racial and ethnic groups, including women as well.
“Prior to affirmative action, discrimination was an extension of these institutions and ideals, supported by the ideals of the American Revolution” (Skrentny, 19). With that being said, we know that not only the discrimination of Americans been a problem since the early 1960s, but affirmative action can be dated as far back as the 1940s when discrimination in America “was tradition, and in some states it was law” (Anderson, 2). Why does it seem fair that an articulated refined black man would be treated less fairly than that of the most illiterate and indecent white man? This just didnt seem correct to many Americans, especially those of African descent. As a result of the civil war, in the late 1880s, many southern states in America had passed legislation regarding laws that were “anti-African Americans”. Consequently, this legislation was the result of