CHAPTER FivE • Civil RigHTs 107
Affirmative Action
A policy in educational
admissions or job
hiring that gives special
attention or compensatory
treatment to traditionally
disadvantaged groups
in an effort to overcome
present effects of past
discrimination.ing. When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth
in 1620, the coast of New England was
lined with empty Indian village sites. The
villages had been abandoned because of
an epidemic touched off by shipwrecked
French sailors in 1616.American indians in the nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries. In the United
States, the American Indian population
continued to decrease through the nine-
teenth century—a time when the European
American and African American populations
were experiencing explosive growth. The
decrease was largely due to the concentra-
tion of Native Americans into ever-smaller
territories. The U.S. Indian population bot-
tomed out at 250,000 at the end of the
nineteenth century. Since that time, how-
ever, it has recovered substantially. The fig-
ure is about 3.2 million today, possibly close
to the number living here before Columbus.
American Indians faced additional chal-
lenges. A federal policy of “assimilation”
adopted in the late 1880s resulted in further
loss of territory and the suppression of tradi-
tional cultures. Indians did not become U.S.
citizens until 1924.
In the late twentieth century, some native tribes hit upon a new strategy for economic
development—gambling casinos on reservation lands. This strategy was possible because
the U.S. Constitution grants the responsibility for Indian relations to the national govern-
ment. As a result, reservations are not subject to the full authority of the states in which
they are located.Civil RigHTs:
ExTEnding EquAl PRoTECTion
As noted earlier in this chapter, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination
against any person on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, or gender. The act
also established the right to equal opportunity in employment. A basic problem remained,
however: minority groups and women, because of past discrimination, often lacked the
education and skills to compete effectively in the marketplace. In 1965, the federal gov-
ernment attempted to remedy this problem by implementing the concept of affirmative
action. affirmative action policies attempt to “level the playing field” by giving special
preferences in educational admissions and employment decisions to groups that have
been discriminated against in the past. These policies go beyond a strict interpretation of
the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. So do a number of other laws
and programs established by the government during and since the 1960s.LO4: Define affirmative
action, and provide some of the
arguments against it.Russell means, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and a former
head of the American Indian Movement, testifies before a Senate committee.
Means died in October 2012 at his ranch in South Dakota. He was 72.
The struggle for American Indian rights has been popular among other
Americans. Why might that be so? (AP Photo/Marcy Nighswander, File)Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
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