"Affirmative action" refers to a set of federal policies and initiatives designed to redress years of discrimination and bigotry in employment and education based on color, race, religion, national origin and gender.

History

The actual phrase "affirmative action" was first used in President John F. Kennedy's 1961 Executive Order 10925, which required federal contractors to "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."

In 1967, President Johnson expanded the Executive Order to include affirmative-action requirements to benefit women.

During the Civil Rights Era in the 1960s, when the United States saw the gradual removal of discriminatory laws, affirmative-action policies required that active measures be taken to ensure that Blacks and other minorities enjoyed the same opportunities for promotions, salary increases, career advancement, school admissions, scholarships and financial aid that had been the nearly exclusive province of whites. Click here to read DiversityInc's articles on civil rights.

These affirmative-action programs worked to open business opportunities, supplier diversity, access to education and voting and civil rights. Along the way, other affirmative-action programs were passed including The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited housing discrimination and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which outlawed the practice of redlining, in which bankers and lenders arbitrarily denied or limited financial services and mortgage loans to specific neighborhoods, generally because its residents were Black or poor.

In recent years, however, affirmative action has come under attack. Much of the opposition to affirmative action is framed on the grounds of so-called "reverse discrimination and unwarranted preferences."

The Supreme Court

In June 2009, the Supreme Court handed a victory to 20 white firefighters who had filed a landmark reverse-discrimination lawsuit against the city of New Haven, claiming they were unfairly denied promotions because they were white.

The Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in the high-profile Ricci v. DeStefano favored white firefighters in a racial-discrimination case and dealt a blow to Judge (now Justice) Sonia Sotomayor, who earlier had ruled against the firefighters.

The firefighters sued New Haven in 2004, a year after the city refused to certify the results of an examination on which only white candidates for the positions of captain and lieutenant scored high enough to qualify for promotion. New Haven city officials countered that they were afraid of getting sued by Black firefighters if they only promoted the white and Latino firefighters.

The high court disagreed, overturning a 2008 decision Sotomayor had once endorsed when she was still a federal judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Another high profile case—Michigan's ban on using affirmative action in college admissions—is winding its way through federal court again. In 2003, in two landmark cases, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan's use of race as a factor in admissions decisions. That decision was heralded as a boost for the continued need for affirmative action to level the playing field.

But in 2006, Michigan voters approved Proposal 2, a constitutional amendment that ended the use of affirmative action in college admissions. Civil-rights groups along with University of Michigan students, faculty and applicants sued in late 2006, charging the ballot measure approved by voters was unconstitutional.

Ward Connerly's Crusade

Conservative Black activist Ward Connerly successfully led the ballot drive for the Michigan affirmative-action ban as well as others in California, Washington and Nebraska.

Connerly, a businessman whose group, the American Civil Rights Coalition, is seeking to disassemble affirmative action nationwide, has spent millions of dollars on ballot initiatives and legal actions to end affirmative action.

Connerly's mission to end affirmative action began in 1995 in California when the former University of California regent championed Proposition 209, a ballot initiative that abolished affirmative action in California state hiring and contracting and public college admissions.

Despite his efforts, Colorado voters rejected a ban on affirmative action a year ago, while proposed bans did not reach the ballot in Arizona, Missouri and Oklahoma

The Fallout and What's Next

The ban on affirmative action in California has led to a huge drop in Latino, Black and American Indian student enrollment at the University of California flagship universities. Since Michigan banned affirmative action, the University of Michigan freshman class had 443 Black students in fall 2005 but only 290 by fall 2009. During the same period, the number of Latino students fell from 312 to 224 and the number of American Indian students fell from 57 to 21. Black, Latino and American Indian enrollment at the University of Michigan Law School dropped 31 percent, and at Wayne State University Medical School, enrollment has fallen 64 percent. (Sources: BAMN, The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary)

In 2008, BAMN succeeded at keeping Connerly's anti-affirmative-action initiative out of Arizona, Missouri and Oklahoma. BAMN is conducting a federal challenge against Michigan's Proposal 2 to strike down as unconstitutional statewide affirmative-action bans in Michigan and across the country.