Myth 1. Affirmative Action rewards gender and race at the expense of merit.
No study has empirically demonstrated that unqualified women and minorities are receiving positions solely on the basis of affirmative action. There is evidence, however, which does suggest that white men get positions due to factors other than merit. The Glass Ceiling Commission found that white men with four or more years of college were 40% more likely to hold administrative, managerial and executive positions than should be expected, given their numbers in the workforce. Meanwhile, similarly educated Black women were underrepresented by 12%, and White women by 33%.
Affirmative action broadens the pool of candidates and it encourages hiring based on sound, job-related criteria. This is good for everyone, since the "old boys network" still limits access to opportunities for women, people of color, and some white men.
In fact, the National Center for Career Strategies reported in 1992 that: * 80 % of corporate executives got their jobs through networks; and * 90% jobs are never advertised, but are filled through networks of friends and associates.
Furthermore, some employers still exhibit bias in interviewing and hiring. For example, a 1991 study by the Urban Institute found clear evidence of continuing job bias against African Americans, who were three times more likely to be rejected for jobs than their white counterparts, even when having equal credentials.
* Affirmative action counteracts the inequity inherent in ongoing segregation of neighborhoods and social networks, where information on job opportunities circulates.
* Affirmative action also promotes practices that allow women and people of color to be considered despite ongoing discrimination and employers' often skewed view of what constitutes "merit" in a hiring situation.
In Washington state, public four-year colleges and universities are allowed to admit students whose test scores and grade point averages fall below the usual admissions cut-offs. These "special admission" rules were originally conceived to promote increased admission of students of color.
Yet more than half of the 978 special admissions in 1994 were granted to white students of both sexes in recognition of special talents and circumstances, as the rules also allow.
College admissions standards have always permitted various preferences that have nothing to do with affirmative action or academic qualifications. These include personal connections, alumni affiliations, athletic skill, or veteran status. Data complied by the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California at Berkeley show that "far more whites have entered the gates of the 10 most elite institutions through 'alumni preference' than the combined numbers of all the Blacks and Chicanos entering through affirmative action."
Myth 2. Quotas are the backbone of affirmative action programs.
Quotas are specifically prohibited by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Executive Order 11246, which outlines the guidelines for affirmative action, never mentions numerical targets. The only circumstance in which quotas are used is as a court ordered tool, a last resort to redress rampant discrimination uncovered in a successful lawsuit. Affirmative action speaks of "good faith goals and timetables" for diversifying the work force.
It is easy to confuse affirmative action with "consent decrees," which are court-mandated quotas imposed by judges on specific institutions after years of proven failure to end discrimination. Ending affirmative action would not affect consent decrees and the associated quotas.
Affirmative action plans do not impose quotas, but rather seek to increase the pool of qualified applicants through "good faith" efforts. Regardless, the media seems to continue to use the terms "affirmative action" and "preferences" interchangeably. The Atlanta Journal & Constitution was the worst offender; 21 of their 34 articles on affirmative action used the two terms as synonyms. For example, a January 15 story was headlined, "Anti-Affirmative Action Advocates See '98 as Theirs," with the sub-headline, "Court Decisions Bolstering Anti-Preference Legislation Movement." The article's lead sentence continued the confusion: "Amid the national conversation about affirmative action, some Georgia lawmakers vow the time has come for a statewide ban of set-asides and quota systems in government hiring and contracts that benefit women and minorities." In this story and others, little attempt was made to distinguish between such disparate concepts as "affirmative action," "preference," "set-aside" and "quota." The persistent use of the problematic terms "preferences" or "racial preferences" as synonyms for affirmative action programs underscores mainstream media's distorted, ahistorical presentation of the issue.
Affirmative action plans can include:
* Goals and timetables for hiring or promoting people from affected groups; and * Training programs and other measures. Affirmative action goals are milestones or benchmarks.
Affirmative action goals are a statistical tool. When employers find that people from affected groups are "underrepresented" in a particular job category, goals are calculated to indicate what their representation would likely be, absent past and present discrimination and its persistent effects.
Myth 3. Affirmative action is reverse discrimination
Some experts believe this myth speaks more to the insecurity among all workers. Affirmative action is not a mechanism of discrimination, but a tool for combating discrimination. Furthermore, "reverse discrimination" is illegal under existing civil rights law that that protect people of all races and both genders from discrimination. Even scholarly opponents of affirmative action can offer little evidence that reverse discrimination is anything other than a rarity.
* Of more than 90,000 complaints of employment discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1994, less than 3 percent involved allegations of reverse discrimination against white males.
* A recent study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor found that, of more than 3,000 reported federal court cases alleging discrimination from mid-1990 to mid-1994, fewer than 100 alleged reverse discrimination.
* Further, only six of those 100 were resolved in favor of white men alleging reverse discrimination.
* The courts found that the vast majority of reverse discrimination cases were without merit and that several were brought by whites who appeared to be less qualified than the minorities who were hired or promoted.
The Labor Department study report also stated:
Many of the cases were the result of a disappointed applicant...erroneously assuming that when a woman or minority got the job, it was because of race or sex, not qualification."
Myth 4. Women and Minorities no longer need affirmative action.
The good news is that women now hold 48% of all professional and managerial jobs, up from an estimated 25% two decades ago. They have started to catch up in pay too. Women currently earn 72% as much as men, on average, as compared to 60% in the mid-70's. When comparing men and women with similar education and experience, the gap is 85%.
Glass Ceiling Commission found that only 3-5% of senior executive positions in the private sector are held by women. Only 5% of those women are women of color. A 1993 study of 439 top female executives with an average salary of $187,000 had 27% of the respondents indicating that being a woman/sexism as their greatest career obstacle. According to the 1995 Affirmative Action Review: Report to the President, "Blatant discrimination is a continuing problem in the labor market."
The report cites various controlled "audit" studies in which white and minority (or male and female) job seekers were given similar résumés and sent to the same set of firms to apply for work. These studies routinely found that employers are less likely to interview or offer a job to minority applicants or women, even when their qualifications match those of whites or men vying for the same positions.
The federal Glass Ceiling issued a study report that notes: * White men, who comprise 43 percent of the workforce, have 95 percent of senior management positions and 80 percent of tenured professorships, because of an ongoing pattern of injustice. * The same study found that serious barriers to advancement remain for women and minorities, including:
* "persistent stereotyping;
* "erroneous beliefs that 'no qualified women or minorities are out there;'" and
* "fear of change."