What The Experts Say

Steven Yates, Ph.D. argues in an excerpt from Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong with Affirmative Action many of the reasons why affirmative action is wrong and should be eliminated. He states that one of the worst parts of the plan is that it does indeed create quotas, no matter what the advocates say. "I have concluded that quotas do exist," he states firmly. His position is that these quotas have "devastated the lives and careers of many people wihtout significantly helping those in targeted groups." To support his argument, he recalls the 1991 case of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. The Daniel Lamp Co., which was featured on 60 minutes. In this case, the owner of the lamp company, Mike Welbel, was a white man who had employed a workforce of nearly all Hispanic and black men and women. Although he certianly had not violated any rules, and was, if anything, showing a bias in employment toward minorities, the EEOC still accused him of racial discrimination when he did not hire a black woman who applied for a hop in 1989. In the proceedings, the representative from the country pulled out a computer and calculated that "based on the 363 companies employing 100 or more people and located within a three-mile radius of Daniel Lamp, Daniel Lamp should employ at any given moment exactly 8.45 blacks, which to Mike Welbel sounded like a quota. And the law says the EEOC can't set quotas.
"It's not that ther's a magic number," said the representative of the EEOC. "Please believe me. We don't set magical numbers for people like Mr. Welbel to meet.
When the hearing was showcased on 60 minutes, the voiceover announced, "That's what Mr. Lafferty says, but, in a sense, it did set numbers by telling Mike that, based on other larger companies' personnel, Daniel Lamp should employ 8.45 blacks."
Welbel pretty much summed up the whole situation by stating, "Any way you slice the pie, it's a quota system." And when asked if he could live with this, he said, "Could I live with it? Yes. Is it more difficult than hiring by qualification? Yes. What the government is asking me to do is hire by color. They're saying, 'Look, this black individual may not be as qualified, but that's who we want to see in your workplace.' What they've become is-They do the hiring and I run the place under their direction. I no longer decide who's good and who's bad."