Revision & Exam Practice for the “legacy” A Level qualifications including:

• Edexcel (Unit 3C – Representative Processes in the USA, Unit 4C – Governing the USA)
• AQA (Unit 3A – The Politics of the USA, Unit 4A – The Government of the USA)
• OCR (F855 – US Government & Politics)

How to use these questions for revision and exam practice:

1. For long-answer or essay questions, plan a 4 paragraph response using the PEEACH paragraph structure (P=point, E=evidence, E=explain, A=argument, C=counter argument, H=how does this answer the question?)
2. Once you have completed your question, read the indicative content.
3. Using the essay criteria, colour code each criteria to show how successful you were at including this in your essay (red, amber or green)
4. There is also a space for you to add additional notes and/or examples that don’t appear in the indicative content, or add better explanations, or include additional, points from the indicative content.

‘Affirmative action has failed primarily because of a lack of political will.’ Discuss. (45)

Indicative Content

Evidence that there has been a lack of political will to promote affirmative action:

• after President Nixon promoted affirmative action in the federal government, since the 1970s the Republican Party has been hostile to affirmative action and the Reagan administration in particular actively sought to undermine it
• since the Johnson presidency, the Democratic Party has been sympathetic to affirmative action but its support has waned in recent years; the most recent significant pronouncement was President Clinton’s defensive ‘mend it, don’t end it’ speech in 1995; President Obama has been notably guarded in his statements
• in recent years affirmative action has largely disappeared from political campaigns (though may return with Fisher v Texas), as candidates of both parties have become wary of alienating key constituencies through either its endorsement or denigration

Other possible causes of the failure of affirmative action include:

• in a succession of cases, the Supreme Court has narrowed the scope of affirmative action schemes
• the nature of black culture means that inequality is likely to resist any attempts to ameliorate it through government action
• given the scale of the problem, affirmative action is too tentative a measure and more drastic action is needed

Arguments that affirmative action has succeeded includes:

• there is a black president
• more blacks are in middle class white collar jobs than when affirmative action first began
• precise equality of outcome was never the goal of affirmative action, but rather making equality of opportunity more of a reality for minorities

Arguments that affirmative action has failed include:

• on every relevant measure, the black population continues to suffer disproportionate deprivation
• affirmative action has entrenched racial divisions rather than erase them
• 50 years is a more than adequate time span for any social policy to be seen to be succeeding