Affirmative Action
Affirmative action caught in tale of the two cities of Boston, Massachusetts and Denver,
Colorado. Since the late 1980s, race and sex-based contracting preference programs in the
U.S. cities have faced significant challenges in the courts (Rubin). On February 7th,
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino announced his plan to eliminate a 15 year old program that
required bidders on city construction contracts to subcontract 15% of work to
minority-owned business enterprises and 5% to women-owned firms (Rubin). That
program is being replaced by one that requires bidders to award 20% of subcontracts to
local businesses and 20 % to firms with less than 20 employees both categories being race
and gender neutral (Robin). While this Mayor announced his new plan, 3 days later on
February 10th, the United States court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit went the other
direction by overturning a lower court and upholding Denver’s constructions M/WBE
program in a decade-long legal challenge by locally based Concrete Works of Colorado
Inc. This program initially earmarked 16% of city construction contracts to MBE’s and
12% to WBEs (Robin). In this essay I will tell you my views on the two cities and their
programs. Is minority set aside programs morally acceptable, is one of the questions I will
be also answering in this essay and will set out the utilitarian and deontological
considerations.
One of the most heated areas of affirmative actions is with jobs. I think that Mayor
Thomas Menino of Boston, new plan shows that Affirmative action works (Robin). I think
