"Let X be a complex nonsingular variety with globally generated tangent bundle. We prove that the signed Segre-MacPherson (SM) class of a constructible function on X with effective characteristic cycle is effective. This observation has a surprising number of applications to positivity questions in classical situations, unifying previous results in the literature and yielding several new results. We survey a selection of such results in this paper. For example, we prove general effectivity results for SM classes of subvarieties which admit proper (semi-)small resolutions and for regular or affine embeddings. Among these, we mention the effectivity of (signed) Segre-Milnor classes of complete intersections if X is projective and an alternation property for SM classes of Schubert cells in flag manifolds; the latter result proves and generalizes a variant of a conjecture of Feh'er and Rim'anyi. Among other applications we prove the positivity of Behrend's Donaldson-Thomas invariant for a closed subvariety of an abelian variety and the signed-effectivity of the intersection homology Chern class of the theta divisor of a non-hyperelliptic curve; and we extend the (known) nonnegativity of the Euler characteristic of perverse sheaves on a semi-abelian variety to more general varieties dominating an abelian variety"--