Anderson, PG). Regardless of these improvements, affirmative action has recently come under attack. But while some people argue that it is unfair to award a position based on race or gender, it is clear that we still need affirmative action. Discrimination still exists and in spite of the gains for minorities and women in the past 30 years, Michigan is not yet a color-blind or gender-neutral society nor is America.
According to Philadelphia Tribune writer, Bernard Anderson, Although white men comprise less than 40 percent of the labor force, they are 96 percent of corporate CEOs. Women hold only three to five percent of the senior-level.
jobs in major corporations (PG).
Recently there have been proposals in the Michigan Legislature to suppress affirmative action, but African American GOP leaders took a stand against this and other Republican leaders followed suit, withdrawing their support for the bills to end affirmative action (Tilles, PG).
Ingrid Scott-Weekley, director of Grand Rapids Equal Opportunity Department, states that without an affirmative action policy, the city would return to a good faith effort, something it instituted in 1989. Not terribly surprising, left to their own devices, businesses didn't hire as many minorities as they would have been compelled to under the affirmative action policy. City contractors, for example, simply did not utilize minorities and women, and that 10 percent participation [under affirmative action] plummeted to roughly 1.4 percent (Czurak, 1).
In May of 1995, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission unanimously adopted a policy to support voluntary affirmative action. It also stressed that individuals have the right to file complaints if they believe they are victims of discrimination (Falbaum, PG). This is an important consideration when discussing the merits of affirmative action. One of the reasons affirmative action gets negative feedback is the very reason it is so necessary in the workplace -- it disrupts the operation of the system by those who would ordinarily benefit from race and gender-segregated institutions, namely white males (M.