Robert Neeld
Democrat for Congress

The Issues

Affirmative Action

My campaign for the House of Representatives is all about the advancement of equal opportunity and the elimination of discrimination on the basis of race, gender, ethnic background or any other criterion that deprives people of opportunities to live and work.

As such, I fully support Affirmative Action.

Affirmative Action is the nation's most ambitious attempt to correct its long history of racial and sexual discrimination. But an increasingly vocal opposition movement, led chiefly by Conservatives and energized by recent court decisions, argues that the battle to guarantee equal rights for all citizens has already been fought and won. They go further by asserting that favoring members of one group over another runs against the American grain.

How wrong and divisive they are!

Granting certain equal opportunity advantages to minorities and women is more than fair, given the undeniable fact that our nation's history, until the 1960s, favored whites and men.

President Clinton strongly defended Affirmative Action by stating that the job of ending discrimination remains unfinished. "Mend it, but don't end it," he said.

Yet Affirmative Action is under attack.

Conservatives want to end Affirmative Action and they are emboldened by recent Supreme Court decisions and by the passage in 1996 of a California ballot initiative abolishing sexual and racial preferences.

Republicans take their divisive, short-sighted battle against Affirmative Action wherever they can.

The fact is, Affirmative Action is good public policy. It arises from the Civil Rights Movement and calls for minorities and women to be given special consideration in employment, education and contracting decisions. Businesses and educational institutions with Affirmative Action policies establish specific goals and timetables for increased diversity. They use recruitment, set-asides and preference to achieve their goals.

Affirmative Action can guide a college admissions officer faced with two similarly qualified applicants to choose the minority over the white, or direct a manager of a business to recruit and hire a qualified woman for a job instead of a man. These decisions are not based on "quotas," nor do they give preference to unqualified candidates.

Furthermore, and after nearly 40 years of Affirmative Action, the playing field still appears to be tilted very much in favor of white men. Overall, minorities and women are in vastly lower paying jobs and still face active discrimination in some sectors.

Affirmative Action remains the nation’s best approach for redressing historic patterns of discrimination, whether it is based on race, ethnicity, gender or some other basis for different treatment of people.

As long as there remains lingering vestiges of racism and discrimination, Affirmative Action remains a necessity for leveling the playing field in housing, education, employment opportunities and, in general, access to the Great American Dream.

Affirmative Action remains the most effective instrument of domestic public policy for expanding equal opportunities to all Americans.

I stand solidly behind the continuation of public policies intended to make government an active player in the expansion of Civil Rights and Equality. This must take the form of a genuine effort. The Federal Government, as our largest and most powerful level of government, must lead by example. It means that key programs, such as 8(a) must not continue to be watered down – but strengthened so that minorities and women can get a fair and equitable share of the federal procurement.

Strengthening this program sends a strong message to state and local governments about the need to maintain and strengthen their own program initiatives for expanding work, business and employment opportunities for minorities and women within public sector procurement and employment.

Here's a brief overview of Affirmative Action at the federal level.

• Originally, civil rights programs were enacted to help African Americans become full citizens of the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution made slavery illegal; the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law; the Fifteenth Amendment forbids racial discrimination in access to voting. The 1866 Civil Rights Act guarantees every citizen "the same right to make and enforce contracts ... as is enjoyed by white citizens ... "
• In 1896, the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld a "separate, but equal" doctrine that proved to be anything but equal for African Americans. The decision marked the end of the post-Civil War reconstruction era as Jim Crow laws spread across the South.
• In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 which outlawed segregationist hiring policies by defense-related industries which held federal contracts. Roosevelt's signing of this order was a direct result of efforts by Black trade union leader, A. Philip Randolph.
• During 1953 President Harry S. Truman's Committee on Government Contract Compliance urged the Bureau of Employment Security "to act positively and affirmatively to implement the policy of nondiscrimination . . . ."
• The 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson.
• The actual phrase "affirmative action" was first used in President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Executive Order 11246 which requires 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, Johnson expanded the Executive Order to include affirmative action requirements to benefit women.
• Other equal protection laws passed to make discrimination illegal were the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title II and VII of which forbid racial discrimination in "public accommodations" and race and sex discrimination in employment, respectively; and the 1965 Voting Rights Act adopted after Congress found "that racial discrimination in voting was an insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of the country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution."

Under the law as written in Executive Orders and interpreted by the courts, anyone benefiting from affirmative action must have relevant and valid job or educational qualifications.