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The government scrutinized not only the number of employees in a company as a whole,
but often looked at the minority representation in separate units. It assessed the minority
representation within the middle- and upper-management ranks, and would frequently
order a company to devise a plan for the promotion of minorities or women. The
government also scrutinized the qualifications or standards established by state entities—
such as police and fire departments—and corporations, and required employers to justify
any qualifications that seemed to have what was known as a “disparate impact” on
minorities or women.

Although affirmative action was originally meant to accelerate the movement of blacks into
the economic mainstream, the plans advanced by the government almost always applied to
groups other than blacks that were also deemed to be the victims of discrimination:
women, Hispanics, Asians, American Indians, and various smaller indigenous groups. The
lumping together of these various groups, including some that scored relatively well on
indices of income, education, and wealth, had unintended and perverse consequences. For
example, federal rules that called for a specified threshold of minority contractors were
sometimes exploited by new, Asian-owned companies that had had little or no experience
with bias.

From the outset, affirmative action was viewed with skepticism by most whites. Opinion
polls have generally shown that whites will support soft or voluntary affirmative action but
oppose government-imposed plans that seem to favor minority hiring over whites or the
lowering of employment or university admissions standards. Because of the emotional
response and intense controversy affirmative action has generated, Congress has been
generally unwilling to deal with the issue, either by giving affirmative action the validation
of legislative approval or by voting to curb or eliminate the policy. The one major
exception came in 1990, when Congress passed, and President George H. W. Bush signed,
the Civil Rights Restoration Act, a measure that nullified several Supreme Court decisions
which had limited the scope of affirmative action plans.24
By the 1990s, most private employers had instituted changes in their hiring and
promotion policies to eliminate practices that the courts and enforcement agencies might
deem discriminatory. At this point, civil rights advocates put forward a new rationale for
policies to encourage or compel corporations and universities to introduce racially or
ethnically based hiring and admissions policies. They contended that even if a corporation
or university had eliminated overt bias from its policies, it should be obliged to consider
race on diversity grounds, that is, on the grounds that major economic and educational
institutions should roughly reflect the broader society’s diverse racial and ethnic
composition.

During the 1990s, affirmative action met with several major setbacks in the courts and the
political arena. In two states, California and Washington, referendums to eliminate
affirmative action in employment and university admissions were adopted by voters.
Likewise, the Supreme Court, in Adarand v. Pena(1995), ruled that the federal government
could not force affirmative action plans on private corporations on diversity grounds
alone.25
More recently, the principal battles over affirmative action have focused on admissions to
public universities. In 2003, the Supreme Court issued important decisions in two cases

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