VoteMatch
Legally require hiring women & minorities
POSITIONS
- Strongly Support means you believe: Affirmative Action makes up for past injustice. Until blacks, women, and other minorities are proportionately represented in the upper classes of the economy and the workplace, society owes them a hand up. Government should actively enforce Affirmative Action laws in private companies.
- Support means you believe: Under-represented groups should be favored, but perhaps basing results on formal quotas goes too far. Nevertheless, the government should prosecute companies which discriminate against women and minorities.
- Oppose means you believe: Affirmative Action is a noble idea, but should not be enforced by government. Government should enforce an end to racial prejudice, period.
- Strongly Oppose means you believe: Affirmative Action is better described as Reverse Discrimination. Quotas based on race and gender are wrong, whichever race or gender they favor. Under-represented groups should fend for themselves without government intervention.
This question is looking for your views on the rights of groups which are under-represented in current society. However you answer the above question would be similar to your response to these statements:
- Support Affirmative Action
- Women still experience a 'Glass Ceiling'
- Blacks & Hispanics are not on a 'level playing field' with whites
How do you decide between "Support" and "Strongly Support" when you agree with both the descriptions above? (Or between "Oppose" and "Strongly Oppose").
The strong positions are generally based on matters of PRINCIPLES where the regular support and oppose positions are based on PRACTICAL matters.
If you answer "No Opinion," this question is not counted in the VoteMatch answers for any candidate.
If you give a general answer of Support vs. Oppose, VoteMatch can more accurately match a candidate with your stand.
Don't worry so much about getting the strength of your answer exactly refined, or to think too hard about the exact wording of the question -- like candidates!
- Strongly Support means you believe in the principle of correcting for past discrimination.
- Support means you believe in the practical benefits of diversity.
- Oppose means you believe some practical reforms are needed, and all quotas should be phased out.
- Strongly Oppose means you believe that affirmative action violates racist principles.
BACKGROUND
Women’s Rights
- Equal Pay for Equal Work: Addresses discriminatory salary differences that exist between certain groups.
The Fair Pay Act of 1999 would provide equal wages and benefits for work of equivalent value.
- ‘Glass Ceiling’: Term was popularized in a 1986 Wall Street Journal article describing the invisible barriers (usually prejudice) that women and minorities face as they move up the corporate hierarchy.
- Domestic Violence: At the heart of the Domestic Violence Act of 1995 is the protection order.
It names the person who is abusive and states what behavior is illegal under the order. The Family Law Act 1996 provides for a single set of civil remedies to deal with domestic violence.
Minority Rights
- Hate Crimes: Congress defines as a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim because of the actual or perceived race, color, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability or sexual orientation of that person.
- Affirmative Action: Minority applicants are preferentially hired to make up for past discrimination.
The equivalent negative term is ‘Reverse Discrimination’.
Candidates discuss whether ‘preference’ implies a fixed ‘quota’.
- Racial Profiling: Also known as ‘Driving While Black’.
Law enforcement practice of using race to decide which motorists to stop.
- Redlining: Practice where banks draw lines around certain low income and minority neighborhoods.
The banks then refuse to lend to those neighborhoods.
- Bilingual education: Government requirement that U.S. public schools teach children in their native languages.
Since 1974, all schools that accept federal funding must provide special language programs.
Disabled Rights
- Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) & Handicapped Access (see Health Care)
- Mental Illness Discrimination (see Health Care)