The Supreme Court ruled in a case concerning a University California at Davis Medical School student that a certain kind of affirmative action in higher education was illegal. The kind of affirmative action that was declared unconstitutional was basically a quota that was set up at the school that required a certain specific NUMBER of black, mexican, and other affirmative action people. The guy was able to prove that his numbers were clearly good enough to get into the school, but because he was white and the school had this quota system set up he wasn't able to get in. But the Supreme Court still allowed affirmative action that "is meant to increase the diversity of the educational setting" or an affirmative action scheme that "ensured that a MINIMUM number amount of students that would be necessary to ensure the intellectual diversity" of the school. Sounds awfully similar to a quota system, doesn't it? Well it is. And now it's basically discretionary so although schools can't impose quotas, they can basically enroll as many schvartzas and other desirables as they want. And now it's all under the guise of "educational diveristy" so now it runs on a new rationale that is less likely to be contested by white people. It's basically meant to trick people, they knew that people wouldn't go for a purely racial scheme, so they came up with this diversity mumbo-jumbo to ensure that affirmative action in schools would survive. Basically where we're at now is no different than we were before the Supreme Court case.
As for the workplace, the Supreme Court hasn't ruled that affirmative action is illegal. It's still widely used across the U.S. I'm not too sure that there hasn't been a court case that has chipped away at affirmative action, but much like the farce of a Supreme COurt case concerning AA in schools, AA is still very much in tact in the workplace. You can still get sued for not having a certain amount of black people in your workforce, so that pretty much ensures that there will be affirmative action.
California declared affirmative action to be illegal, but I believe it's the only, or one of the only states to do so. I'm not sure of the extent to where this goes, there might still be lawsuits available to workers who believe that not enough black people have been hired at a particular place, and even though this is not a specific affirmative action policy, it's still de facto affirmative action. If people can "prove" that companies discriminate because there aren't enough blacks, affirmative action still exists because people are scared not to hire enough black people and they'll hire some who they wouldn't have otherwise hired.
I'm not too knowledgeable about AA in the workplace because I haven't had to worry about it too much, maybe our Jewish teacher will be able to tell us more about it.
Topic: Legal status of Affirmative Action. (Read 2350 times)