Affirmative Action

            
             In 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act which introduced affirmative action along with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (Affirmative Action: Facts and Myths). This was during the time when blacks were emerging from the chains of segregation resulting from slavery. In this time discrimination was common and the problem of discrimination very apparent. In this era anyone that was not a white male was discriminated against on a regular basis. The solution to this problem at the time was affirmative action and the EEOC. Affirmative action is defined as a policy or a program that seeks to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment, which brings me to my point. The idea of affirmative action was suitable in the time period in which it was written, but times have changed and the law needs to change in cooperation. I strongly believe in the idea that affirmative action proposes, but at the same time many people are being cheated out of career and educational opportunities because of the abuse of the plan. The way it is interpreted now, affirmative action gives minorities an unfair advantage over whites. The founders of the plan developed it in an attempt to distribute opportunity equally among all of America's residents. Now companies have quotas set on diversity in the office, and will hire a less qualified minority just to meet them. The Supreme Court's Bakke decision in 1978 ruled numerical goals and quotas regarding ethnicity and gender illegal . In 1995 the Congressional Research Service turned up 160 laws and regulations one third of which are still enforced laws setting numerical goals and quotas. In 1994 the Los Angeles Fire Department refused five thousand white men from taking their qualifying test because the department had not yet met its minority and gender hiring goals . If a house or a building is on fire, the firefighters" gender or ethnic background should not play a role in comparison with their ability to save people's lives.