Evolution of Affirmative Action in America Essay Example for Free

Evolution of Affirmative Action in America Essay Affirmative action in America refers to policies that take ethnicity, race, and gender into consideration in an effort to encourage equal opportunity. It started as a device to deal with the enduring discriminations among African-Americans in the 1960s. Focusing particularly on jobs and education, affirmative action policies mandated that active measures should be taken to make sure that blacks and other minorities benefited from equal opportunities for financial aid, scholarships, school admissions, career advancement, salary increase, and promotions that had been practically the whites’ exclusive province. The thrust towards affirmative action is twofold; including the rectification as a result of involuntary, institutional, or blatant discrimination, and the maximization of the advantages of diversity in every levels of society. In 1964, the landmark legislation of Civil Rights Act was signed into law, which prohibited employment discrimination by large employers, regardless of their previous contracts with the government. President Johnson developed and enforced for the first time the country’s affirmative action through the Executive Order 11246 of 1965 and amended it in 1967 through Executive Order 11246 requiring every government contractors and subcontractors to observe affirmative action so as to expand employment opportunities for ethnic minorities and women. However, the 1978 decision of the United States Supreme Court in the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 912 ruled illegal the practice of the University Medical School of setting aside 18 seats for minority students in every incoming class of 100, but upheld the use of race as one aspect in selecting qualified applicants for admission. Opposition to affirmative action has resulted to numerous legal challenges, which required local and states governments to draw on more comprehensive evidence of inequalities to validate the need for the programs. In 1998, both the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives prevented efforts to abolish particular programs of affirmative action. Amendments to eliminate the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program sponsored through the Transportation Bill were rejected by both houses, and the upper house rejected an endeavor to abolish the use of affirmative action in higher education admissions programs supported through the Higher Education Act. Throughout these periods, affirmative action has been both ridiculed and praised as a response to racial inequalities. The opinions of the Supreme Court justices in affirmative action cases have been generally divided partly because of conflicting political beliefs but moreover because the issue is basically so complicated. But in 2003, the landmark case involving the affirmative action policies of University of Michigan, which became one of the most imperative rulings on the issue in 25 years, the Supreme Court finally and positively supported higher education’s right of affirmative action. The Court held as constitutional the use of race, among other aspects, of the University of Michigan in its law school admissions program given that the program advanced a compelling interest in achieving an educational advantage that flows from the diversity of student body. At present, statistics proved that affirmative action has helped strengthen the black professionals’ ranks, yet African-American in general has been left behind. Notwithstanding all the discussions of the establishment of a black middle class, the position of the black community to white American has relatively remained the same. As such, affirmative action must be continually asserted to put in place mandatory and voluntary efforts by local, state, and federal governments, schools, and private employers to combat inequalities and encourage fair hiring and promotions of qualified individuals.

Group Climate Essay -- essays research papers

Group Climate Group climate consists of the overall sentiment that is displayed within a group. This includes the aspects of honesty, openness, consistency and respect according to â€Å"Teamwork† by Lefasto and Larson. When evaluating the characteristics of group climate in a team, the most prevalent component to examine is trust. Trust yields respect, acknowledgement, cohesiveness, a bridge between cultural differences and above all else, sensitivity to ideas being expressed so a consensus can be reached. However, as pointed out by â€Å"Teamwork†, trust is extremely fragile. If trust can be maintained and not breached, a team has defeated one of the few obstacles that inhibit the team from attaining their ultimate goal. This is because trust breeds belief in other team members, respect in their actions, and efficiency, as the group will not have to spend extra time ironing out problems that may arise when a breach of trust occurs. Due to trust’s fragility, a breaking of trust can come do to a number of seemingly insignificant circumstances. Such circumstances include a member coming late to a meeting, not being prepared, presenting illogical and not well thought-out ideas, inconsistency in behavior, holding back opinions, etc. In order to avoid such circumstances, team members must have a clear vision of their goal and have a certain degree of zeal concerning the purpose of their task. To create these two ideals, it is suggested that the first activity a group collaborates to achi...

A Synopsis of the Movie Fight Club Essay

The movie begins as Jack, the protagonist, is trapped in a state of insomnia by his job at calculating the cost of recalling a faulty car as opposed to paying court settlements to the relatives of the people killed by that car. He then recommends the one that seems less expensive. While he tries to argue with a doctor about how he can start sleeping, the doctor happens to make a sarcastic remark about how if he wants to see real pain he should go to a support group for men with testicular cancer. Jack takes this remark literally. It is there that he meets Bob, whom I shall describe shortly. Anywhere, he begins to find the support groups addictive, and attends more and more of them, and finds that they allow him to sleep. Soon after in the movie we find Jack meeting Tyler Durden on a plane trip, and when his apartment later explodes Jack meets Tyler Durden in a bar. Having agreed to let Jack stay at his house, Tyler asks Jack to punch him. He tells Jack this will make him feel that hi s life was indeed exciting, and Jack obliges. They begin to fight, and others begin to stand around, wanting to join as well. They gather together, protesting amongst themselves that society was trying to turn them into wimpy and uniform machines and preventing them from feeling like real people, constantly telling them that they need to buy all sorts of stuff that they only need because the advertisements said they did. Pretty soon there are weekly gatherings of these men, waiting for a chance to fight one another, and then they move into the basement of a local bar. More and more men begin to attend Fight Club with the express agreement that they would not mention it, and rumors begin to circulate of Clubs in other cities. Gradually Durden begins to make the Club more involved, giving out â€Å"homework assignments† such as to start a fight with a stranger and lose. Thus Jack finds himself watching as Durden institutes Project Mayhem, an outward attempt at changing society based on widespread attacks on coffee franchises and corporate artwork. Finally Durden plots to blow up ten major credit card companies, with the intent that to erase everyone’s debt would create chaos, and allow society to re- organize itself from that chaos. Many critics of the movie found it to portray antisocial behaviors as a valid way of expressing oneself. (Particularly if only the beginning and middle of thi s movie are looked at.) They argue that its violence is there merely to draw an audience. This is supported by numerous instances of young men and boys vandalizing cars as was done in the movie or forming clubs of their own. Therefore many say that the movie succeeds in condoning what the ending condemns. They say that it promotes violence by making it seem so attractive in muck of the movie, regardless of the conclusion. With this argument in mind, we shall proceed with our analysis of the movie itself. One of the principal themes in Fight Club is its treatment of violence and its relationship with masculinity. The men in the film are portrayed as confronting a society which gives them little meaning and refuses to give them what they feel to be a birthright, a meaningful, productive place in society. Tyler Durden, the leader of Fight Club and the manifestation of the angry, alienated, and purposeless feeling, articulates this, â€Å"We’re the middle children of history, with no special purpose or place. We don’t have a great war in our generation, or a great depression. The great depression is our lives. The great war is a spiritual war. We have been raised by television to believe that we’ll be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars–but we won’t And we’re learning that fact. And we’re very, very, pissed off.† The men in this movie, having their traditional masculine role of breadwinner seemingly denied by feminism and left with meaningless corporate jobs compensate for this loss of masculinity and control by re-affirming their masculinity for themselves through the only masculine behavior they still can do: fighting. According to Jackson Katz: One way that the system allows working class men (of various races) the opportunity for what Brod refers to as â€Å"masculine identity validation† is through the use of their body as an instrument of power, dominance, and control. For working-class males, who have less access to more abstract forms of masculinity-validating power (economic power, workplace authority), the physical body and its potential for violence provide a concrete means of achieving and asserting â€Å"manhood†. Bob also fits this description of fighting as compensation for that sense of paralysis preventing men from being either a crucial part of society or being able to change it so that one can be. Through a combination of the treatment for testicular cancer and of increased estrogen as a result of his steroid use while a body-builder which Bob was left with unusually large breasts and left him with very little perception or himself as masculine or valuable to anyone. However, Bob later appears in the movie as a member of Fight Club, where he finds that once again he can act â€Å"like a man† and feel as if his masculinity is validated. Jack finds Durden’s assertions that the men in their generation have no other wa y to express their individuality or to free themselves from materialism than to fight each other, and to use their fighting as a method of filling the void left by the removal of worthy roles for men in society. In the beginning of the film Jack is using mail-order catalogs, becoming so obsessed with buying whatever he sees advertised in them that his orders become an end to themselves. I would flip and wonder, â€Å"What kind of dining room set ‘defines’ me as a person?† He became so obsessed with obtaining what he saw in the catalogs that he filled up his apartment with furniture and all sorts of other stuff he didn’t need. This seems also to address the increasing assertion by advertisements that you can be defined and given a soul by acquiring products. Durden also spoke of this sort of cycle: â€Å"Look at the guys in fight club. The strongest and smartest men who have ever lived — and they’re pumping gas and waiting tables; or they’re slaves with white collars. Advertising has them chasing cars and clothes. A whole generation working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy shit they don’t really need.† He was alluding to the shackles that a culture based on acquisition has on its members, and inviting these members (namely men) to throw off the shackles and prove that they didn’t need a better dining room set to define them. All they needed, he assured them, was to fight, and would show their humanity and masculinity through that. During another one of his outcries about the male relationship with society, Durden once came upon a designer clothing billboard featuring a muscular man in jeans and no shirt, and criticized it much like various critics of ads which use unrealistic shows of feminine beauty to sell products asked, â€Å"Is this what a real man looks like?† After smearing it with blood, he proclaims, â€Å"Guys packing into the gyms, all trying to look like what Calvin Klein says. Fight club isn’t about looking good.† Susan Faludi, author of Stiffed: the Betrayal of the American Man† calls this sort of â€Å"ornamental masculinity† a major factor in the â€Å"Angry White Male† mentality: The more I consider what men have lost–a useful role in public life, a way of earning a decent living, respectful treatment in the culture–the more it seems to me that men are falling into a status oddly similar to that of women at midcentury. The ’50s housewife, stripped of her connections to a wider world and invited to fill the void with shopping and the ornamental display of her ultrafeminity, could be said to have morphed into the ’90s man, stripped of his connections and invited to fill the void with consumption and a gym-bred display of his ultramasculinity. The empty compensations of a â€Å"feminine mystique† and transforming into the empty compensations of a masculine mystique. Douglas Rushkoff gives his account of the switch from a linear and continuous world to one that was non-linear and discontinuous. Before this switch, middle-class men were seen as valuable and benevolent authority figures who were a pillar of society and who always succeeded in bringing home food for the table because his work paid relatively well. The society felt that there was value also in acquiring as many new and technologically advanced possessions as possible, which allowed for the men to ensure that their wives would find it enjoyable to expend all of their energy at home, cooking and vacuuming and buying better things for cooking and vacuuming. In this way men were given the great majority of political power and respect. However, the awareness of the corruption in politicians’ lives from Watergate, the national confusion after a country was able to watch Kennedy assassinated on TV, and possibly the most lasting of all, the first time that ordinary citizens were able to see combat in Vietnam on the nightly news, creating a much more suspicious outlook on the government and military, caused society to become discontinuous. The former male status symbol was gone along with continuity, replaced by gender equality which prevented men from using the feminine mystique to their advantage, making them less likely to have a dependent wife and family. They lacked that meaning which they had when they were providing for their offspring and mate, to put it in a biological concept, so their motivation to work was largely gone, with consumerism alone unable to fill the void. Their power having toppled, the male now tried to fill this void and prove that he indeed was still a man for society. Consumerism was unable to do that anymore, and so the male body itself, as Jackson Katz said, became the tool. This is shown by the film, in which Tyler Durden attempts to destroy the discontinuous society which tells him that he should not have this total control. This is shown by his completely anti-feminist outlook, particularly his meaningless sexual relationship with Marla Singer. â€Å"Except for their humping, Tyler and Marla were never in the same room†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Jack relates. Tyler also describes a generation of unaggressive men â€Å"raised by their mothers†, that characterized his peers who grew up in a time of increased divorce rates and in turn grew up without fathers. â€Å"The last thing we need is another woman.† He gives reason to his masochistic fights and burns by saying that you could create pain for yourself, thereby â€Å"hitting bottom†. He describes it not as a painful and agonizing experience, but a turning point, where you are going to feel excellent after having your teeth knocked out no matter how bad your station in life is. And so Durden’s scheme to create chaos which would then begin society anew, Rushkoff would say, actually was showing that he was trying to mold society around himself. Meanwhile Jack in the end renounces Tyler’s ideas of violent upheaval, instead deciding that he would accept society as discontinuous and use its discontinuity as part of his life. This film therefore shows the advantage in not letting what happens matter to you such as it would in a linear world. Edward Herman’s perceptions of the film would be those of contradiction, largely centering around the fact that the movie is marketed and designed to make a profit, yet at the same time it criticizes the idea that you need to buy what society tells you to buy and that material goods are unnecessary to life. He might postulate that the companies had realized that a capitalistic message promoting conformity doesn’t sell, and instead used and anti-capitalistic message of being skeptical of what society and everyone else tells you to make an even greater profit (much like Sprite’s paradoxical campaign which made fun of soft drink ads, then told people to buy Sprite). he would observe in short not that corporations indeed rejected themselves, but that they now make themselves even more effective by letting people pay to watch them pretend to do so. My own impressions of the movie are that along with its messages on corporations and their relationship with the identity crisis in American men is that it also offered a lot of information on the ultimate problem with taking violence as a way of demonstrating masculinity. This is especially apparent with Bob, who, managed to rediscover his manhood in Fight Club and in Project Mayhem, but was also killed while part of the latter. Fol lowing his death, he is spoken of by his comrades as if he had never been human. This is saying that to become part of violence unquestionably despite perceived acceptance and purpose is to swap one form of denial of yourself for another. Bibliography. Katz, Jackson/ authority on phenomenon of violence and its link to masculinity and cultural trends creating this phenomenon/ Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity This article discussed the use of violence by white men as a tool to regain power they feel to be lost to other groups. Discusses overuse of portrayals of violence and its symbols in advertising. Faludi, Susan/ author of Backlash and Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, a contributing editor for Newsweek, â€Å"The Betrayal of the American Man, At Ground Zero of the Masculinity Crisis, The Ornamental Culture, Beyond the Politics of Confrontation† Newsweek, (09-13-99) â€Å"It’s ‘Thelma and Louise’ for Guys†, Newsweek (10-25-99) These articles discuss how men have reacted to the identity crisis from their loss of job status and expresses that much of it comes from a modern image of manhood impossible to attain and in the latter relates such phenomena to the film . Fletcher, Kim, â€Å"Male Fantasies† The Spectator (11-20-99) Much like Faludi in that it concludes that film is the result of male feelings of inadequacy in modern culture addressing the question of how to react. Rushkoff, Douglas/ author of Media Virus and Playing the Future among others content take from excerpts of Playing the Future This book describes the cultural evolution caused by the digital age and resulting in adopting non-linear thought and in chaos mathematics. Herman, Edward/ linguistics professor at MIT, comrade of Noam Chomsky â€Å"The Propaganda Model Revisited† from Capitalism and the Information Age This essay enlightens as to the role producers’ and reporters’ personal biases and more particularly of their desire for profit plays in how the media portrays certain events or whether they even mention certain events at all. Braun, Bill, â€Å"Auto dealership vandal released after finishing ‘bootcamp'†, World Staff Writer final home edition (date not given) This, among other articles, outlined or mentioned the violent and anti-social effects that the film seemed to have on the younger adults and adolescents, such as forming their own little fight clubs or vandalism. Uhls, Jim Fight Club screenplay available at http://geocities.com/scifiscripts/scripts/fight_- club_shoot.txt

Globish Language Definition and Examples

Globish is a simplified version of Anglo-American English used as a worldwide  lingua franca. (See Panglish.)  The trademarked term Globish, a blend of the words  global  and  English, was coined by French businessman Jean-Paul Nerrià ¨re in the mid-1990s. In his 2004 book Parlez Globish, Nerrià ¨re included a Globish vocabulary of 1,500 words. Globish is not quite a pidgin, says linguist  Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer. Globish appears to be English without idioms, making it easier for non-Anglophones to understand and to communicate with one another (The Anthropology of Language, 2008). Examples and Observations [Globish] is not a language, it is a tool. . . . A language is the vehicle of a culture. Globish doesnt want to be that at all. It is a means of communication.(Jean-Paul Nerrià ¨re, quoted by Mary Blume in If You Cant Master English, Try Globish. The New York Times, April 22, 2005) How to Learn Globish in a WeekGlobish [is]  the newest and most widely spoken language in the world. Globish is not like  Esperanto or Volapuk; this is not a formally constructed language, but rather an organic patois, constantly adapting, emerging solely from practical usage, and spoken in some form or other by about 88 per cent of mankind. . . .Starting from scratch, anyone in the world should be able to learn Globish in about one week. [Jean-Paul] Nerrià ¨res website [http://www.globish.com] . . . recommends that students use plenty of gesticulation when words fail, and listen to popular songs to aid pronunciation . . ..Incorrect English can be extraordinarily rich, and non-standard forms of the language are developing outside the West in ways that are as lively and diverse as Chaucerian or Dickensian English.(Ben MacIntyre, The Last Word: Tales From the Tip of the Mother Tongue. Bloomsbury, 2011)   Examples of Globish[Globish] dispenses with idioms, literary language and complex grammar. . . . [Nerrià ¨res] books are about turning complicated English into useful English. For example, chat becomes speak casually to each other in Globish; and kitchen is the room in which you cook your food. Siblings, rather clumsily, are the other children of my parents. But pizza is still pizza, as it has an international currency, like taxi and police.(J. P. Davidson, Planet Word. Penguin, 2011) Is Globish the Future of English?Globish is a cultural and media phenomenon, one whose infrastructure is economic. Boom or bust, it is a story of Follow the money. Globish remains based on trade, advertising and the global market. Traders in Singapore inevitably communicate in local languages at home; internationally they default to Globish. . . .Much gloomy American thinking about the future of its language and culture revolves around the assumption that it will inevitably become challenged by Mandarin Chinese or Spanish or even Arabic. What if the real threat--actually, no more than a challenge--is closer to home, and lies with this Globish supranational lingua franca, one that all Americans can identify with?(Robert McCrum, Globish: How the English Language Became the Worlds Language. W.W. Norton, 2010) The Language of EuropeWhat language does Europe speak? France has lost its battle for French. Europeans now overwhelmingly opt for English. The Eurovision song contest, won this month by an Austrian cross-dresser, is mostly English-speaking, even if the votes are translated into French. The European Union conducts ever more business in English. Interpreters sometimes feel they are speaking to themselves. Last year Germany’s president, Joachim Gauck, argued for an English-speaking Europe: national languages would be cherished for spirituality and poetry alongside a workable English for all of life’s situations and all age groups.Some detect a European form of global English (globish): a  patois  with English physiognomy, cross-dressed with continental cadences and syntax, a train of EU institutional jargon and sequins of linguistic false friends (mostly French). . . .Philippe Van Parijs, a professor at Louvain University, argues that European-level democracy does not require a homogenous culture, or  ethnos; a common political community, or  demos, needs only a lingua franca. . . .  The answer to Europe’s democratic deficit, says Mr Van Parijs, is to accelerate the process so that English is not just the language of an elite but also the means for poorer Europeans to be heard. An approximate version of English, with a limited vocabulary of just a few hundred words, would suffice.(Charlemagne, The Globish-Speaking Union. The Economist, May 24, 2014)