Affirmative Action Today

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creed, color, or national origin" (qtd. in Hall 898). In 1954, the Brown decision [Brown v. Board of Education] required racial desegregation in schools and other public places. The Brown decision led to "the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, soon supplemented by the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act" (Graglia 26). This was the beginning of public awareness to the racial discrimination issue.
Many blacks today still feel the effects of racial discrimination. Henry Gates Jr., a black Harvard professor of the Humanities, reveals in his article "Two Nations.. Both Black," how racial discrimination still plays a part in society:
We [blacks] are still humiliatingly vulnerable to racism,
in the form of random police harassment, individual racial
insults from waitresses and attendants in stores, the
unwillingness of taxi drivers to pick us up, systematic
discrimination by banks and bank loan officers, wage
discrimination in the workplace, and our ...

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action argue that blacks who get the jobs do not get them on their own merit but obtain them because of the color of their skin. Some employers have to resort to hiring underqualified applicants over qualified applicants in order to satisfy an affirmative action program. Failure to meet numerical goals may cause some businesses to suffer grave consequences. In Detroit, the Michigan state legislators pressured the Detroit Symphony Orchestra into hiring more blacks by threatening to take away 1.3 million dollars in state funding. The Detroit Symphony's usual hiring process of "blind" auditions, to prevent racial discrimination, was then abandoned to ensure black employment. Rick ...

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