Affirmative Action Affirmative Action was started to eliminate discrimination in the workplace by hiring workers on a nondiscriminatory basis. It began in 1961 by president Kennedy when he issued executive order number 10925 to make federal contractors take affirmative action(Altschiller, p.5). The goal of affirmative action is to allow "the victims of discriminatory conduct to the position they would have occupied in the absence of that conduct" Rehnquist said. Should such policies be legal and deemed as good or looked down upon as a failed attempt to solve our racial problems? Affirmative action does not eliminate discrimination if anything it makes it more of