Disabled Veterans
Many societies in the world have divisions in lives. In such societies and especially the United States, the divisions are based on inequality in many opportunities which has persisted for long even after a number of policies and strategies to end apartheid and racial segregation. Many efforts have been made to ensure equality and to have women and disabled people considered in opportunities such as employment. In the past, women were discriminated and, men occupied all the positions at workplace.
The blacks were discriminated in education and at workplace such that no black could practice as a doctor or other profession simply because they were black. Many movements have been developed to limit various types of discrimination, and currently the women’s movement is working hard to ensure equal participation of women and men with equal opportunities. Other groups such as lesbians and gays are also fighting to get equal right.
The Disabled Veteran Affirmative Action Program plan was established to ensure increased employment opportunities for disabled and qualified veterans (OPM, 2006). Affirmative actions are being used as a way of enhancing equality. They give preferential treatment to some groups of people, usually the women, minority groups and the disabled. Affirmative programs considers these people to have been disadvantaged in their past or currently, where by they aim compensating them for their past discrimination, or offering equal opportunities in the present society.
This is achieved by recommending a higher population of the disadvantaged in an opportunity against the majority population, or by considering a feature which favors the disadvantaged group. Affirmative actions are being used in many organizations and work places, and it has raised an issue, on whether the disabled veterans should be given preferential treatment over more qualified candidates. The concurrent sections of this paper shall give my arguments towards the issue, setting out both deontological and utilitarian considerations.
Arguments
The affirmative action considers compensatory justice. In it’s accordance, the disabled veterans will gets a job over most qualified people in the same field as a way of compensation. In the society, there are many people who are trained, qualified and who rare in the process of training in various fields. Just as the old veteran trained and were given the opportunity to practice in the trained field those who have trained and the ones training expect similar opportunities to practice.
This means that when the disabled veterans are given the chance to practice in the competitive market, the qualified and able people will be locked out of the opportunity which will not have solved the issue of discrimination in such case what the affirmative action will have dome is a reverse discrimination where by a physically able and qualified person will be denied a chance to work despite the fact that he or she can perform better than the disabled veteran. Affirmative actions consider having a large group of disadvantaged people included in the program.
Use of quotas does not end discrimination as the affirmative programs views them they they exclude some the unconsidered or rather the majority group. For example, when large number of Asians are included in the program, Black Americans and the Americans will be discriminated from the program. California superior court encourages the state to use affirmative actions programs which are expected to facilitate fair employment practices and stop use of quotas and denial of opportunities on the basis of gender or race.
To emphasis on the use of program, programs which used quotas for contracts between the state and business owned by women, minority and disabled were struck down. In such case the the program (Charles, 1999, pp. 48). With the use of the quotas the award of state contracts would continually favor, and have contracts with the businesses owned by the minority, disabled and minority while discriminating the businesses owned by people in the majority group.
When the state made law to have fifteen percent of the states contracts for businesses owned by women, minority and disabled veterans the court could not accept the laws on the basis that the law would promote discrimination of the majority group. The affirmative action favors the poor and gives them the priority over the rich. The program recommends favoring the disabled veterans over the healthy and physically able people with same or even more qualification.
The affirmative programs should ensure equal recruitment of all individuals in the society regardless of their physical ability. All people need to get similar education opportunities to create a pool of qualified people in the community. When providing jobs or employments qualification should be the only consideration to ensure that no individual is discriminated. As long as education is provided in an equal measure, choosing from qualification becomes the fairest method (Hurst, 2007). The disabled, or disadvantaged people have few chances of getting the required qualification.
For example children from rich families which are represented by the majority have access to all materials and apparatus require through out their education and learning course. They have computers, attend the schools with the required and effective learning programs. Such children have all the time for their studies because their needs and requirements are catered for by their rich parents or guardians, unlike children from poor background who need who are expected to work for longer time at the expense of their studies to meet their basic needs.
Poor children learn and live in pathetic environment, and in schools with inadequate facilities. The children from rich and the poor background will be assessed by same assessors and tests without a favor to either child. This means that the child who had appropriate facilities and learning environment will perform better than the poor child. The knowledge of the two children varies, since the poor are limited to further learning or training. This means they are likely to have little or no knowledge concerning the job they are being given.
This means that when employment is provided on the basis of the physically disabled or disadvantages people in the society, the ones with little or no qualifications will be given the chance, causing reverse discrimination. The unqualified or semi-qualified individuals will be given positions they do not deserve and since they are not qualified in the field, they fail to carry out the required duties and subsequent failure in their roles, organization and the entire society.
The affirmative action programs considers empowering the minority, the disabled veterans and women to take lead in various projects programs, organizations and the society. The California superior court upheld and implemented programs to identify discrimination with no regard to race and gender preferences. According to the programs, the state agencies were to identify areas within the state where women disabled veterans and the minority were not utilized well, and aimed at enhancing their utilization (Charles, 1999, pp. 48).
Well they can be empowered through these and other means but when the minority, the disabled or women are given the opportunity to lead the people being lead resent them. They are resented not because of their minority, disability or inferiority, but because they are preferred against the other people in the society. Resented individuals develops a negative attitude towards other people, and since they are discriminated or rather excluded from participating in various activities in the society, bad morals develops.
Conclusion
Although disabled veterans need preferential treatment over the physically well people, a lot need to be considered.
Although that is the target of the affirmative action programs, the preference and especially in employment should be based on individual’s qualification, skills, and experience. This this organizations and employers can get the best for best performance and output, without discrimination. The only way to get best employees, fairly is based on their qualification. The affirmative action programs should find other way of implementing compensatory justice, rather than job as the compensation because some of them are not qualified, or their disability limits them from effective performance.
The affirmation programs enhances discrimination through collectiveness. The qualified are denied opportunities because they bare socially or politically dominant. The past social and economic status of individuals should not be considered when giving preferential treatments as the affirmative program does, rather the current status should be used. When individuals are preferred because of their social group instead of their qualification, their accomplishments are degraded (George, 2001, pp. 40).
