RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN THE WORK FORCE
This research reviews the issue of racial discrimination in the work force in the United States. The emphasis in this research is placed on discrimination against African Americans as numerically they are the largest racial minority group in the American population.
Affirmative action generally requires a firm to focus on legal requirements associated with recruitment, hiring, promotion, and dismissal. Affirmative action legislation in the United States at both the federal and state levels of government establish guidelines for the development and implementation of social policy with respect to equal employment opportunities and with respect to the rectification of past acts of employment discrimination against selected population groups. Income distribution objectives, laws prohibiting social discrimination, and, in some instances, policies intended to rectify the effects of past discrimination affirmative action goals have all become a part of "the rules of the game" for American business. Equal opportunity and fair employment practices legislation has been enacted and enforced (with varying degrees of vigor, depending upon the philosophical stance of the administration in power) since the early 1960s.
In theory, government regulation designed to eliminate employment discrimination should have no adverse impacts on business and industry, for in theory discrimination between individuals in relation to hiring, promotion, retention, and compensation would be based only upon performance or upon performance potential. One study concluded that firms would enjoy increased profitability as a result of the elimination of compensation differentials based upon sex or upon racial or ethnic background. This study assumed, however, that the distribution of abilities and motivations to learn, knowledge bases, and skill levels were similar in all racial and ethnic groups, and in both men...