Citizen Groups on Affirmative Action

LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens):

• Stance: Supports it.

• We have been slow in defining affirmative action and have failed to get the public response generated by the opposition. Affirmative action merely casts a wider net to include a larger number of qualified applicants to compete and participate. Affirmative action allows women and people of color and other minorities access to higher education, jobs, and business opportunities which have been historically out of their reach. Affirmative action is a system of goals and programs that strengthens our national economy. It provides Corporate America with the diversity necessary to compete in the global market. It helps to ensure that the public sector is reflective of the populations it serves. Quotas and preferential treatment have never been a part of any affirmative action program

ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) :

• Stance: Supports it.

• Affirmative Action is one of the most effective tools for redressing the injustices caused by our nation’s historic discrimination against people of color and women, and for leveling what has long been an uneven playing field. A centuries-long legacy of racism and sexism has not been eradicated despite the gains made during the civil rights era. Avenues of opportunity for those previously excluded remain far too narrow. We need affirmative action now more than ever.

 NOW (National Organization of Women)

• Stance: Supports it.

• Affirmative Action levels the playing field so people of color and all women have the chance to compete in education and in business. White men hold 95% to 97% of the high-level corporate jobs. And that's with affirmative action programs in place. Imagine how low figures would be without affirmative action. Of 3000 federal court decisions in discrimination cases between 1990 and 1994, only 100 involved claims of reverse discrimination; only 6 of those claims were found to be valid...Despite the enormous gains made by the civil rights and women's rights movements, women and people of color still face unfair obstacles in business and education. An astonishing 70% of schools are not in compliance with Title IX, the federal equal education opportunity law. For every dollar earned by men, women on a whole earn 74 cents, African American women earn 63 cents and Latina women earn 57 cents. According to the Census Bureau, only 25% of all doctors and lawyers are women. Less than 1% of auto mechanics are women. And women are only 8.4% of engineers.

NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)

• Stance: Supports it.

• The necessity of Affirmative Action has been a hot topic in American society for a number of years. Affirmative Action was established in 1965 by President Johnson in order to redress the discrimination that was evident in employment, education and business despite the civil rights laws which made such discrimination illegal. The purpose of Affirmative Action is to provide opportunities for minorities and women; it is not meant to create quotas.

CAIR (Council on American Muslim Relations)

• Stance: Supports it.

• The mistake of many critics of affirmative action is to understand it only as a guilt-driven form of reparations. By that thinking, white people are discriminated against today solely to make up for generations of bias against minorities. But greater diversity in any setting almost always benefits the nation as a whole. A diverse police force has tentacles in every corner of a community. A diverse classroom is likely to engage in a more robust and educational discussion of, say, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A diverse Supreme Court can better appreciate the social impact of its decisions.

Sources:
http://www.aclu.org/FilesPDFs/affirmative_action99.pdf
http://lulac.org/advocacy/issues/speech/
http://www.cairchicago.org/tag/affirmative-action/
http://www.naacp.org/blog/entry/the-debate-on-affirmative-action
http://www.now.org/issues/affirm/talking.html
http://www.tmariam.blogspot.com/