Disabled Veterans Affirmative Action Program v. Traditional Affirmative Action

The affirmative action programs seen today did not originate in their current form. The programs were created in the 1960’s by President John F. Kennedy when he signed an Executive Order requiring federal contractors to ensure that applications are reviewed and opportunities given without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin. His successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson extended that Executive Order to encompass gender as well. The programs do not grant favoritism towards those protected. Individuals still must have the requisite job experience and educational qualifications necessary to earn the job on their own merit.
Affirmative Action programs are designed to promote equality in a few key areas such as the workplace and educational institutions. Some arguments for Affirmative Action are that they give groups who have been denied opportunities in the past an equal chance to succeed. For example, statistics show a person who comes from an educated family is more likely to be educated themselves. This higher chance of educations has translated into more opportunities for success. Affirmative Action opponents claim that the programs reduce the sum of the individuals they were created to support, to simply a race and gender. The programs can lead to employers unofficially saying that an applicant is qualified for a job because of their creed or sex.
The Disabled Veteran’s Affirmative Action Program (DVAAP) is a different type of Affirmative Action program that applies to Federal Agencies and places stipulations on hiring disabled veterans. One of the DVAAP’s goals is to “increase the number of disabled veterans in professional and administrative positions in grades G-5 through G-12 through internal job advancement opportunities such as merit promotion or upward mobility.” Another is to “insure the number of disabled veterans in technical and professional positions through recruiting.”
The DVAAP is an affirmative action program, but there is one key difference between the DVAAP and traditional affirmative action programs. DVAAP applies to disabled veterans regardless of sex, gender, or ethnic background. Traditional affirmative action programs apply to women and specific disadvantaged minorities.
Looking at these programs from the “greatest happiness” view would make a strong argument for traditional affirmative action but against DVAAP. If it is the right ethical choice is whichever will provide the most happiness or good to the greatest number of people, then programs that put the best qualified people forward are the ethical one. The traditional Affirmative Action programs strive to eliminate all factors other than job qualifications. DVAAP creates a requirement to consider military service that may not serve as any indicator of job qualification or future job success. With our nation currently being at war for an eleventh straight year, support for veterans, especially those disabled by service, is still running high. This could be used to support the idea that it causes the greatest happiness by using DVAAP to push our vets up. I believe that this may seem like the ethical choice in this current time of war but as the war winds down, so will the patriotism of the nation and we will have potentially put less than the most qualified people into positions based on a sense of national pride as opposed to merit. In the long run, the utilitarian benefit of DVAAP that we see today will not exist in an America at peace.
From the perspective of duty and right, DVAAP is firmly founded in ethics. Since the United States has a 100% volunteer military, they have all assumed a duty to the nation to defend and protect. With the creation of DVAAP, military members know that if they become disabled that they will still be afforded opportunities to serve their country after their career in the military has ended. It is a strong argument that if men and women volunteer to put themselves in harm’s way in defense of our country, then it is our countries duty to provide for them in the occasion of their injury. There are many jobs in which our military personnel have developed skills in that could prove beneficial to the federal jobs they look to transition into after the military. Depending on your view of traditional Affirmative Action, it could also be argued that our nation has the duty to repay for the oppression that was imposed in our history. Either way, Affirmative Action programs, including DVAAP, can be called ethically responsible deontological decisions.
Each situation involving Affirmative Action programs can have its own unique ethical debate. Just from an overarching view, I have argued for and against both programs without even getting into specifics. If these programs continue to work as designed, they will hopefully eliminate themselves. As we continue to push forward the aspects and qualifcations that society has deemed most worthy, be it military service or pure merit alone, we will hopefully result in having a work force and leaders of highly qualified personnel free from the stigma of previous generations race and gender prejudices. As these people climb the ladder to become today and tomorrows decision makers, they can choose to continue the principles of the Affirmative Action programs regardless of their existence or not.

References: http://www.affirmativeaction.org/about-affirmative-action.html http://www.fedshirevets.gov/job/vetpref/index.aspx