Affirmative Action Essays - Social Inequality, Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action Essays - Social Inequality, Affirmative Action Affirmative Action Affirmative Action: Reverse Discrimination? Affirmative Action is a hot issue in the United States, with wide differences of opinion over the correct way to expand opportunity for people who have historically been discriminated against. With the philosophical difference behind the legal and political tensions is deep. One side wants a total rollback of affirmative action programs, making individual merit the only criterion for hiring and promotional considerations. While the other extreme wants affirmative action to be pushed until the racial makeup of all professions mirrors the racial makeup of US society exactly. While both these sides are to the greatest ends of the argument there needs to be an approach to come up with a medium. This could include laws to force companies to vigorously recruit and develop minorities for professional and managerial jobs. However, there should not be any outright quotas, which reserve a certain number of slots for particular minority groups. This will cause resentments and constitutional obs tacles down the road. The objective here is not to do away with affirmative action in one sweep, rather to seek out strategies to help promising minorities and match them with opportunities they have rightfully earned and deserve. Now, what does the law say? Although Title VII has an affirmative action component part of it, most regulations stem from a requirement imposed by Executive Order 11246. There are a lot of misconceptions about affirmative action and what laws companies actual have to follow. One is that all companies are required to adhere to the laws under affirmative action, this is not the case. Executive Order 11246 states that once a company enters into a contract with a federal governmental agency that exceeds $10,000 it must abide by the affirmative action rules and regulations. These regulations include, but are not limited to, the following: to post in a conspicuous place, available to all applicants, provisions of the nondiscrimination clause; include in contractor's advertisements that all qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, gender, or national origin; include statements of these obligations to all subcontractors; and furnish all informa tion and reports to the Secretary of Labor for purposes of investigation to ascertain compliance with the executive order and its regulations. In addition to the above regulations if a corporation enters into a contract of $50,000 or more additional requirements are put in place. A Corporation must develop a written action plan within 120 days of the beginning of a governmental contract. They must also perform a workforce analysis, which must indicate how many women and minorities are in job categories ranging from unskilled workers to managerial employees. These are the basic rules and regulations companies and corporations must follow in order to be within the compliance of the law. There have been several major court decisions that have helped define the application of the statutes and regulations. One of the biggest and earliest cases was that of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. This case was not against an individual's employer rather against a university. Bakke applied to Davis for two consecutive years but was rejected on both occasions. In both years, applicants with lower scores than Bakke were admitted due to a special admit program. Davis had a program that says applicants who are not of minority status are totally excluded from a specific percentage of the seats in the entering class. When the State's distribution of benefits hinges on the color of a person skin, that individual is entitled to a demonstration that the challenged classification is essential to promote a tangible state interest. For this reason the court's judgment was that Davis' special admission program was invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment. Another case, that di d deal with the employer-employee relationship, was United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO v. Weber. In this case a white employee sued because his employer adopted a voluntary affirmative action plan reserving for black employees fifty percent of the openings in a training program. Because the company had put in place a voluntary program to eliminate an apparent racial imbalance the Supreme Court held that the program was permissible and did not unnecessarily trample the rights of white employees. These are just

Leech and Leach

Leech and Leach Leech and Leach Leech and Leach By Maeve Maddox Reader Erik Engstrom was surprised to see this misuse of the word leech in an article at Wired: . . . certain chemicals that leech metals from the body. Pronounced the same [lÄ“ch], leech and leach have different meanings. The word leech is the old word for â€Å"doctor.† It comes from OE laece, â€Å"physician.† Leech meaning â€Å"bloodsucking aquatic worm† may have originally been a different word, but assimilated to the word for doctor, possibly because doctors used leeches for blood-letting. Figuratively, a leech is a person in a parasitic relationship with another. The word leach comes from the OE verb leccan, â€Å"to moisten.† In current usage the verb leach refers to percolation of a liquid. The Wired writer was using the word in the sense of â€Å"to take away by percolation.† Related to leach is the word leak, â€Å"to let water in or out.† It may seem that the figurative sense of leak to mean allowing secret matters come to public attention must be a 20th century innovation, but it’s not. The intransitive use of leak with this figurative meaning dates from 1832. The transitive use, â€Å"to leak information,† is recorded from 1859. The figurative use of the noun leak to mean the information leaked didn’t come along until 1950: The Post published the latest leak from the White House. We can thank Henry Miller for the first published use of leak as a noun meaning â€Å"the act of urination† (Tropic of Cancer [1934]). Leak as a verb meaning â€Å"to piss,† however, dates from 1596. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Regarding Re:10 Types of Transitions20 Movies Based on Shakespeare Plays