Affirmative Action: Reverse Discrimination or Equity?

The affirmative action executive orders, legislation, and regulations of the 1960s and 1970s encompassed most employment areas and practices, so the success of government-stimulated antidiscrimination policies is partially reflected in employment statistics for women and minorities in the mid-1970s. To understand resistance to affirmative action, it is useful to consider briefly how remedial employment strategies have evolved with changing antidiscrimination goals. During the affirmative action period, practices that have a negative and differential impact on minorities and women—even though they are outwardly neutral (i.e., have an indirectly institutionalized discrimination effect)—have been challenged. By the time the Education Amendments were passed in 1972, the groups affected by antidiscrimination employment strategies included almost all employers; federal contractors; educational institutions; and executive, administrative, and professional employees. Another characteristic of antidiscrimination employment remedies has been the unusually active involvement of several governmental branches in implementing antidiscrimination goals.