Affirmative Action

Dictionary.com defines Affirmative Action as: "A term referring to various government policies that aim to increase the proportion of African-Americans, women, and other minorities in jobs and educational institutions historically dominated by white men. The policies usually require employers and institutions to set goals for hiring or admitting minorities." [1] The key word here is government. Without government intervention Affirmative Action would not exist because it would simply be a private institution choosing on their own accord to hire more women and minority employees. Affirmative Action comes into play when the government tells a private business that its workforce must represent its community, or when the government offers incentives to those businesses that hire more women and minority employees. Why though is it bad for the government to encourage such hiring practices? First we must look to see what the role of the government is. Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "declares it to be the policy of the United States that discrimination on the ground of race, color, or national origin shall not occur in connection with programs and activities receiving Federal financial assistance." [2] Government agencies, that use federal tax dollars, telling and offering private businesses incentives to hire a diverse workforce gives those in the minority an advantage over those who are not. That advantage may make little or no difference but the fact remains that a federally funded agency is helping or at attempting to help a specific group of people based on race and gender. While I find most parts of the Civil Rights Act to be intrusions on civil liberties, in this case preventing government discrimination is a positive force. Second we must ask on what grounds does the government have the power to tell a private business what they can and can't do? This includes who they serve and who they choose to hire. We call this the Freedom of Association, the freedom to choose who you want to interact with and who you do not want to do so with. The government does not tell you that you must have a diverse group of friends, or that if you have a party you must invite a group of people that accurately represent your community. Instead you are free to make the decision of who you want as a friend and who you want to allow on your property for a party. Instead of a party imagine you own a business. The concept is still the same, one ought to have the freedom to pick and choose who they want to associate with, be they employees or customers, on their own property. Claims that this kind of freedom would promote racism in private business have long been shot down. Richard Epstein, a professor of law at University of Chicago, has said the majority of private businesses would not discriminate because it "incurs a cost and therefore [is] a competitive disadvantage." [3] Business are not in the business of racism, they are in the business of making money. The Freedom of Association has long been upheld by the United States Supreme Court. In the case of the NAACP v. Alabama the justices declared it is a right "to pursue [] lawful private interests privately and to associate freely with others". [4] We also have the freedom of assembly in the US Constitution, and what really is a business but a group of people assembled together with common interests? Freedom is an essential part of this country, or at least it ought to be, and a government telling private institutions how they should be run is certainly not freedom in any sense I know. ---| Sources |--- [1] - http://dictionary.reference.com... [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org... [3] - http://en.wikipedia.org... [4] - http://en.wikipedia.org...