Affirmative Action Speech Essay, Research Paper

Intro: To start off, I would like to present a quote from Historian, Roger Wilkins. ?Blacks have a 375-year history on this continent: 245 involving slavery, 100 involving legalized discrimination, and only 30 involving anything else.?

This quote makes you think, That?s a rough history to go through. The next thing that comes to your mind should be, well have things gotten better? And the answer is yes and no. Yes, we have come a long way, and No, there are still many things wrong.

Affirmative Action is unfortunately abused but not using this law effectively outweighs the abuse in America.

To prove our argument, we have 2 types of evidence to present to you. One is outrageous statistics and the other actual cases to back up those statistics.

Case 1: First of all, this statistic comes from an article in the Washington Post.

 Of the 91,183 discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in fiscal 1994, 89,816 minorities, which included women and 1,367 white males, alleged that they had been discriminated against because of their race.

 Further, a draft study of discrimination cases handled by the U.S District and appellate courts conducted for the labor department indicates that a ?high proportion ? of reverse discrimination claims are ?without merit?.

 ?You can?t make the case that this {backlash} is quotas,? said California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D). ?The explanation for why people view it that way is the scapegoat phenomenon.?

 Doesn?t this tell you something? That yeah Affirmative Action may be abused in isolated situations, but overall, these statistics don?t lie in showing that there is an overwhelming amount of Minorities which includes women that are still being Discriminated against.

Case 2: Second, Obviously something is barring women and minorities from reaching the highest levels of achievement in the workplace, regardless of qualifications.

 This statement is from an article in the Washington Post, The Glass Ceiling Commission reported that 97% of Senior Managers at the Fortune 1,000 corporations were white males.

 Now how is that, if Two-thirds of the overall population and 57% of the nations workforce is female or a minority or both.

Case 3: Thirdly, The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) is one of the government?s most important engines of affirmative action.

 To show an example of their usefulness, take Aaron Woodson, an African American. Woodson never complained about discrimination after he applied for but did not get a job at Solectron Corp., a Silicon Valley computer chip manufacturer. Instead, his case was found two years later with the help of a computer.

Let me explain what this means:

 Using reports that Solectron filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a computer analysis showed that Solectron had a low percentage of minority workers compared with similar firms in that geographic area.

 The OFCCP?s regional office in San Francisco began an audit, one of about 4,100 done annually on firms that do business with the federal government.

 After reviewing Solectron?s records, the auditors found nine qualified minority applicants ? five Hispanics and four African Americans ? who have been rejected for jobs.

 Since 1994, OFCCP has recovered more than $100 million dollars in total financial settlements for victims of discrimination.

Due to time constraints we selected the case I just presented, but we have with us today 108 more cases of discrimination against minorities and women.

In Conclusion: As you can see from the statistics we have gathered and the obvious non-use of Affirmative Action?s ability to effectively help keep a diverse working environment without the use of these so called ?quotas?. Yes surely there are some cases of abusing Affirmative Action, but there are evidently a majority of more cases showing failure to use the powers of Affirmative Action. By powers, I mean the ability to select employees without discrimination.