"AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, SOLUTION OR PROBLEM" Part of the civil rights movement over three decades ago, affirmative action calls for minorities and women to be given special consideration in employment, education and contracting decisions. Affirmative action is the nation's most ambitious attempt to fix its long history of racial and sexual discrimination. But these days it seems to incite, rather than ease. An increasingly assertive opposition movement argues that the battle to guarantee equal rights for …showed first 75 words of 199 total…

…showed last 75 words of 199 total…hundreds of years of discrimination that benefited whites and men. Today, affirmative action can call for an admissions officer faced with two similarly qualified applicants to choose the minority over the white or the women, or for a manager to recruit and hire a qualified woman for a job instead of a man, they are not supposed to give any preference to unqualified candidates. And they are not supposed to harm anyone through "reverse discrimination."