Affirmative Action

BY THE MIDDLE of the 1960s, it had become obvious that the state of the African American underclass in the United States needed to be addressed. Measures were required to attempt to mend some of the problems that [Page 8]African Americans faced. The American public had become exposed to a new civil rights movement with leaders rallying black masses to take action against an oppressive and racist society. A sympathetic President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964, in an attempt to help eradicate acts of racial discrimination, but it seemed primarily to address overt acts of personal prejudice.

Affirmative action programs have their legal basis in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although the first executive order enforcing affirmative action was not issued until September 1965, the act marked a major new commitment toward outlawing racial and sexual discrimination. Johnson defined his policy in a speech to Howard University students on June 4, 1965, in which he declared that institutionalized racism was preventing African Americans from attaining equal rights. Institutional racism is the concept that underlying structural forces prevent African Americans from gaining equality with whites.

Civil rights leaders Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael were the earliest activists to publicly denounce institutional racism and its effects on the black masses, identifying such factors as inferior education due to segregated schools as constituting institutional racism. To rectify this problem, Johnson advocated protection of minority group rights over individual rights, which led to affirmative action programs.

The basis of affirmative action programs was that while blacks were legally equal to whites, because of segregation, they were still trapped in the lowest societal class and faced many obstacles in order to rise in society. Thus, for America to truly treat African Americans equally, blacks were entitled to certain privileges that incorporated them into various professions and places of higher education. Such programs have proven to be successful, but nonetheless have undergone extreme criticism from conservative opponents who claim that such programs are “reverse racism.”

Restitution has been one of the basic principles that define affirmative action programs. Proponents of restitution believe that African Americans should be compensated for their victimized pasts. Slavery lasted for almost 250 years in America and when it was abolished, it was then replaced by legalized segregation to facilitate the economic and political control of the freed slaves. Lynching became a common mistreatment of blacks at the end of the 19th century and served to further enforce racial injustice. While segregation was legally abolished by 1968, the positive effects would not be felt by African Americans unless further actions were taken to integrate them into better jobs, higher education, and middle class society. Affirmative action programs thus focused on giving priority to a small percentage of African Americans who displayed the qualities and potential to excel in school or at work, and who otherwise would have been overlooked in favor of white candidates.