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Affirmative Action and Nebraska’s Initiative 424
Affirmative action traces its roots to the civil rights era of the 1960s. Affirmative action is still very much a component of both state and federal law, however. It has been a critical element in promoting women's and minorities' interest in the workplace and in many other realms of society. Nebraska, however, is currently considering Initiative 424, a proposal to throw out such things as race and gender when considering such things as the recruitment of minority students and the hiring of city employees (Hansen, 2008a). This move is not only controversial, it will have not just local and state reverberations but also federal reverberations. The issues surrounding Affirmative Action, the federally mandated requirement of aggressively seeking out minorities for employment and giving certain advantages to women over men and to minorities over non-minorities in terms of hiring and promotion practices, are complex. While many view affirmative action as an effective vehicle for the promoting the welfare of disadvantaged ethnic groups and women in the modern day workplace, others view it in a more negative light. Some, such as Doug Tietz (director of the Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative) contend that the presumption that race and ethnicity are indicative of someone’s background and life experience is flawed (Hansen, 2008a). Initiative 424, however, has both supporters and critics. Harvey Perlman (chancellor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln), for example, contends that affirmative action has yet to accomplish what it was implemented to accomplish, that
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abolishing it now would adversely impact our likelihood of actually ever achieving true equalit