Affirmative Action - Does It Work Today Essays - Social Inequality

Affirmative Action - Does It Work Today The Unites States Constitution, in Amendment XIV, Section 1, states, All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (1) Affirmative action can trace its roots back to the 14th amendment, although it did not really get started until Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, giving minorities equal employment rights. The overall strategy and outline for this plan were contained in Executive Order 11246, which was issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1972 (Gilbert et al. 2). This led to a wave of programs that were intended to further the equal employment opportunities for minority individuals. Affirmative action programs were intended to legally require organizations to be diverse. During the 1990's these programs have come under a lot of scrutiny and are being replaced with a concept known as diversity management. . Managing and valuing diversity are key aspects of organizational behavior, but the question lies in how to create the diversity within the organization. In this paper, I will examine several articles that will give us reasons that affirmative action should be replaced by divers ity management, as well as one that believes that affirmative action is still needed in today's society. Mary Guy believes that affirmative action programs are still needed today. She noted that if we lived in a perfect world we would not have a need for organizations to have affirmative action programs (240). However, since people have a tendency to work around people that are most like us, programs are needed to ensure that past discriminatory actions are corrected. Opposition to these programs generally has come from advantaged groups who feel that quotas will keep them from their jobs. Since the laws creating affirmative action never required quotas, then when quotas have been put in place, they are merely exceptions to the rule (Guy 242). Diversity in the workplace has been slowly increasing under affirmative action, however, Guy feels that this is no time to abandon it, but to keep it moving forward (242). Stigmatization revisited: Does diversity management make a difference in applicant success?, written by Jacqueline Gilbert and Bette Ann Stead, includes the results of experiments conducted at two universities. These experiments examined whether there was a greater perception of increased qualifications and competence when employees were hired under a system of diversity management versus an affirmative action plan. (Gilbert & Stead 1) The second article Diversity management: A New organizational paradigm, written by Jacqueline Gilbert, Bette Ann Stead, and John Ivancevich, defines diversity management and compares it to affirmative action. Furthermore they discuss strategies that will help to insure that a diversity management program is successful. (Gilbert et al. 1) In Stigmatization revisited? the authors performed experiments to determine the effects of affirmative action versus diversity management. Individuals, both women and those of color, that were hired under the guise of an affirmative action plan were generally viewed as less qualified than there peers. It was noted that the perception was that if they were qualified for the position, then they would have been no need for an affirmative action plan. Those individuals that were hired in an atmosphere of diversity management were not perceived as being more or less qualified than their peers. These results were especially evident when the job was a traditional male type, for example, an electrician (Gilbert & Stead 11). They concluded that an organization that valued and promoted cultural diversity would enable women and minorities to be perceived as competent for the positions that they held. Also those companies would have an inherent advantage when it came many other areas; including resource acquisition, marketing, creativity flexibility, and corporate attractiveness. These advantages would lead to greater profits and therefore a more positive outcome (Gilbert & Stead 11). Thc theories of affirmative action

The Physical Development Of A Human Being Essays - Endocrine System

The Physical Development Of A Human Being Essays - Endocrine System The Physical Development Of A Human Being Catherine The Physical Development of a Human Being As defined in Berk's, Development Through the Lifespan, physical development is changes in body size, proportions, appearance, and the functioning of various body systems; brain development; perceptual and motor capacities; and physical health. The physical development of a human being is the unique because of all of the visible changes that every human being goes through. Physical growth results from a continuous and complex interplay between heredity and environment. Humans begin to develop before they are out of their mother's womb. After conception, the zygote is what I consider the earliest development of the human being. The period of the zygote is about two weeks long. The zygote then becomes an embryo. The period of the embryo lasts from the second week on through the eighth week of pregnancy. The embryo then changes to form the fetus. The period of the fetus is from the ninth week until the end of the pregnancy. The zygote, embryo, and fetus all form in the first trimester o r pregnancy. By the third trimester, the fetus is around seven and half pounds. I weighed about eight and one fourth pounds when I was born. My mother still tells me that when I was born I had enough hair to braid. She says all my hair gave her horrible heartburn. Luckily she did not smoke or use any drugs or alcohol during the time that she was pregnant with me. All of these things can do serious harm to the fetus. Boys tend to be a little longer and heavier than girls at birth. Babies change faster than older humans do. The human body grows and enlarges at the most rapid rate during the first two years. Weight is gained steadily during this time. By nine months baby fat has usually arrived and is at its highest level. This helps babies to maintain a constant body temperature. Babies become thinner during the second year. This held true for me from what I have seen of my baby pictures. Babies do not tend to be very muscular or coordinated. The child grows and size increases, and different parts of the body grow at different speeds. There are two growth patterns that represent this. The first is called the cephalocaudal trend. During this phase the head takes up a fourth of the body and the legs take up a third. The second pattern is called the proximodistal trend. This is when the growth proceeds from the center of the body outward. During infancy, the arms and legs continue to grow ahead of the hands and feet. The brain is closer to adult size at birth than any other body part on a baby. When a child reaches the age of two, the brain is already at seventy percent of its adult weight. Some of the factors that influence this early growth are heredity, nutrition, and emotional well-being. Over the first year of life, babies begin to organize sounds into complex patterns. During the second half of the first year, babies begin focusing on larger speech units. These larger units are critical to figuring out the meaning of what babies hear. By nine months babies begin to listen to speech for much longer periods of time, and they begin to perceive it on wordlike segments. A childs vision goes through some extensive changes during the first seven to eight months of the childs life. The childs vision improves a great deal throughout the first year. When a child begins some form of independent movement, they begin to better understand depth perception. When an adult moves around on his/her own, they too have a better feel for landmarks and what is around them. The rapid growth in body size that takes place in infancy begins to slow down in early childhood. During this time boys still tend to be a little larger than girls are. When I was this age, all of my friends were boys, and they were a little larger than I was. Increasing control of the childs hands and fingers lead to a huge improvement in the fine motor skills. Their drawings become more and more