![]() ![]() ![]() Since 1965, legal barriers prohibiting minorities from receiving equal access to education have been dismantled. In a 1965 commencement address at Howard University, President Lyndon Johnson articulated the general philosophy of affirmative action: “You do not take a person, who for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say ‘you are free to compete with all the others' and still believe that you are being completely fair.” Minimizing the consequences of slavery and racial separation was the original intention of affirmative action and has been used (or misused) as an instrument of public policy by every U.S. Racial integration of postsecondary educational institutions had been decided by the Court prior to Brown, but fair and equal access to quality education in all sectors (public, private, and independent) gained more currency with the Brown decision and moved the education debate to center stage in the public discourse on race. ![]() The May 17, 1954, decision in the Brown case did more than allow minority and nonminority children the opportunity to be educated together without regard to racial distinction it also signaled a sea change in which African-American students would henceforth have legally entitled access to the same public academic institutions as their white counterparts. In winning Brown, the NAACP was successful in reshaping policies regarding public education in the United States. Board of Education, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) recognized the Supreme Court's preference for historical precedent and debated educational reform within the context of Plessy's violation of the 14th Amendment (passed in 1868), which protected former slaves and their descendants from unconstitutional acts. Once established as de jure law, it would take another judicial rendering by the U.S. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, was actually a compilation of civil rights cases that argued for the elimination of the “separate but equal” principle that had shaped the relationship between African Americans and whites since the Plessy v. A BRIEF HISTORY OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN THE UNITED STATES ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |