Affirmative Action Helps Qualified Minorities

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Affirmative Action Helps Qualified Minorities

Affirmative action doesn't require a company to hire the local percentage of women and minorities, qualified or not. The program determines the percentage of qualified women and minorities available to a company, then sets flexible goals, to be reached in good faith. As a result, numerous studies show that minorities who land their jobs through affirmative action are not less qualified than their colleagues.

Critics of affirmative action often evoke images of qualified white males being denied jobs so that lesser qualified women and minorities might have them, all in the name of racial and gender fairness. But this is one of the worst myths about affirmative action.

Affirmative action works by determining what percentage of qualified women and minorities are available to a company, and then setting a goal for hiring that percentage. For example, suppose a minority makes up 30 percent of the local population, but only 15 percent are qualified for the company's jobs. The goal for the company is 15 percent, not 30 percent. A...

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