The Pros And Cons Of Affirmative Action

Imagine a student named Billy is applying for a scholarship. Along with Billy, his friend Juan is applying for the same scholarship. Billy and Juan are equally qualified. The only difference between the two is that Billy is white, and Juan is Mexican-American. When the two find out who got the scholarship, they discover that Juan got it, but Billy didn’t. Billy wonders why Juan got it but he didn’t. The answer is affirmative action. Affirmative action is an action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination, and it is an outdated program that is creating unequal opportunities for non-diverse people.

Affirmative Action is one of the many social issues facing America today. Affirmative action was signed into place in 1961 by President Kennedy and allows minority groups or people who face discrimination to become employed or get an education that is equal to that of a white male. Groups that Affirmative Action aims to help are women, blacks, Latinos, and people with disabilities. While these policies were signed to slowly rid the workforce and schools from discrimination, it hurts people who do not face discrimination, specifically whites. Many white men and women lose special opportunities to work or go to college because of certain standards that the Affirmative Action laws require. Universities and the military require a certain number of minorities in order to meet the standards and have a more diverse atmosphere. An example of this is the California V. Bakke supreme court case of 1978.

The Founding Fathers wanted all men to be treated equal. The Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (Jefferson, 1776). Unfortunately, equality for everyone has not been truly realized. The main issues affected were people’s skin color and gender. Women and people of color were not considered to be equal for many years. To correct this issue Affirmative Action was implemented. Affirmative Action helped people of color and women to be considered for jobs and accepted into colleges equally among other candidates. Today, equality between races and genders has improved, although Affirmative Action should be modified to meet the needs of today’s society.

I will try and keep the stance on affirmative action at a neutral at the moment until after the synthesis. I also believe I have gotten a bit confused between the original document for the progress report, with a paragraph for each of four sources, and the new two pages instead. I will do two pages of the four sources together in a synthesis.

Affirmative Action has been around for a very long time, as time progress so have the people of this nation. The people we were in the 50’s and 60’s are significantly different from who we are today. I think that Affirmative Action is a good contribution and should be kept around. When I think about all the great things that minorities can do I don’t see were any harm is being done.

Affirmative action was put in place to give minority groups like African Americans, Latinos, and women, who were historically discriminated against in the past, special access to jobs and education. And I can understand the purpose of this several years ago; there were very little to no opportunities for these groups. Affirmative action provided programs to these groups that weren’t available otherwise. But in the 21st century, things are very different. Although racism is still an issue in our country, it’s nothing like it used to be. And there are far more opportunities

There have been arguments against affirmative actions stating that it does more harm than good because it is another form of discrimination when in reality affirmative action just helps minorities who have been oppressed for so long that they may not know where to begin. These groups of people may have grown under particular circumstances for so long that they need help; President Lyndon Johnson commented on this in a speech over affirmative action stating that you cannot “take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” The action would be completely unfair when others know how to run the race, and many do not even know how to walk it.

Affirmative action is a long going battle with social and political conflicts focused mostly in education. The Universities of Texas, Michigan and Washington were challenged in recent years due to their controversial court cases all from affirmative action. With the court taking the side of acknowledging diversity in education as a priority, the decision made by the court will continue on with many controversial debates on diversity and whether the policy should be eliminated indefinitely. Even though this will not put an end to the policy soon, the long road to equality will be a bumpy ride with prolong positive and negative effects. I hope affirmative action would be changed or eliminated in the near future because it causes problems within

local agencies from granting preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in public education, public employment or public contracting” (NCSL). Eventually there was 7 other states that followed in the steps of California and have completely banned the use of Affirmative Action policies like Florida, , Michigan, and Washington (NY Times).

Affirmative action and any race-positive policies should be dismantled; I disagree with affirmative action. Better stated from the debate question: like Jim Crow, affirmative action is invidious racial discrimination. Affirmative action should take the path similarly to that taken in California – become abolished. Affirmative action does discriminate on a racial level. Affirmative action implies that minorities cannot achieve a certain goal without the help of a race-positive policy, which is invidious racial discrimination. While policies developed to create diversity may (or may not) bring in diversity, the policies are damaging and create a “second-class ‘minority degree.’” (Scalia, 1979) Colleges and employers should look at substance and

The arguments of Allan Bloom, are contending, based on many years of teaching at Cornell and the University of Chicago, that “affirmative action now institutionalizes the worst aspects of racial separatism.” This programs goal is to help develop more diverse campuses, but also helps underprivileged and underrepresented minorities achieve extra help into admission at schools where before they would have not been considered. Affirmative action helps Hispanics, African Americans, and Native Americans; majority of these students with equally if not higher qualifications are being hurt. Caucasians and other non-minority students are being denied because colleges are pushing for more diverse campuses. Affirmative action leads to the denial of a

Affirmative Action is a program that needs to be ended, and at the very least needs to be drastically changed in order for it to truly help those who need it the most. Though Affirmative Action has many supporters, there are also those who oppose it just as strongly. Nowadays, every problem that arises in our country somehow gets tied back into race. College admission is something that should be based on merit, not on the issue of racial diversity. Though diversity in the classroom is essential to good discussion, diversity doesn’t just come through race. College “students meet classmates who have very different takes on the world than their own, who devote their energies to very different enterprises, and who exemplify different values

America is founded on the belief that all citizens are free to pursue their ambitions regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin. Yet, for the last fifty years, Affirmative Action has created an educational and work environment less focused on equality and more focused on ethnicity. There is no benefit for the United States to enforce Affirmative Action for minorities in educational and employment opportunities and equal treatment, because it promotes reverse discrimination, devalues real accomplishments, and cultivates the minority struggle.

Affirmative Action programming is seen by some as a mechanical remedy to past social conditions that penalized minority member applicants for employment, women, or persons with disabilities. In the United States, Affirmative Action has been seen as compensation for the exclusion of the African American community, in particular, and has been hoped to create upward mobility for more members of this sector. In this sense, Affirmative Action may have much encouraged individuals to strive for education, training or employment of kinds they would not have thought accessible, in past generations. Similarly, women have been helped by Affirmative Action to know that their

Affirmative action was created to assist minority groups against discrimination, but affirmative action does more harm than what it can do to help. Affirmative action was created with the intention of leveling the playing field so that everyone can have an equal opportunity to be hired or accepted in to a school, but it does the opposite of what it is meant to do. Affirmative action is reverse discrimination against white males, lesser qualified people are admitted into jobs and colleges, and not all people have an equal opportunity to advance.