Affirmative Action ? The Right Approach? In the beginning, it seemed simple enough. In 1961, John F. Kennedy, then president of the United States of America, established the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity by executive order. The goal was to curb discrimination by the government and its contractors, who were now required to ?not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin. The Contractor will take affirmative action, to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.? Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 expanded this idea of affirmative action by declaring that ?No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.?An ideal was established. A vision of people with all kinds of backgrounds taking advantage of equal opportunities and reaching comparable goals in their lives arose. But it soon became apparent that, in order to be able to compete, these people would need the same tools, the same educational background, indeed, the same abilities. The next U.S. president, Lyndon B. Johnson, said it best in his 1965 commencement address at Howard University: ?You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ?You're free to compete with all the others,? and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates??That is a very convincing argument, and affirmative action as we know it today has become the answer to it, giving a certain degree of ...
