Final answer:
The term for efforts to make amends for past discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and gender is affirmative action. It includes active efforts by governments and businesses to provide equal opportunities in employment and education, and it is a strategy to combat historical disadvantages and achieve equity.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term for making amends or getting rid of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and gender in job markets and housing is known as affirmative action. Affirmative action refers to the active efforts by government or businesses that give special rights to minorities in hiring, promotion, or access to education to compensate for past discrimination.
This concept originated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Executive Order 11246. It aims to ensure equal access to opportunities and create equity by providing remedial benefits to those who have been historically disadvantaged.
An additional strategy used to reduce discrimination is altering the information available during hiring processes, such as removing markers of protected categories, or in the case of symphony orchestras, using blind auditions to achieve gender equity.
However, this method can be challenging to implement effectively across all types of employment sectors.
Moreover, the media and public often frame affirmative action as a controversial issue, with debates centering around the aim to remedy the effects of past injustices versus the opposing view that government should not discriminate based on race at all.