“Affirmative Action may not be a perfect system, but there should be no doubt that it has endangered many successes. It has opened the doors of America’s most elite educational institutions to minority students, granting them unprecedented opportunities” (Ogletree 12). Thanks to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson a policy that prohibits employment and education discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, and sex is offered today to those who suffer from said discriminations (A Brief History). Affirmative action has opened abundant openings for minorities, allowing the cycle of going to college to be passed down generations and provided job opportunities that otherwise would not be considered by most. Affirmative …show more content…
After all, it gives minorities what some would call, an unfair advantage. One point Anne Hull makes in her article “Affirmative Action Hurts White People” concerns readers that affirmative action is unconstitutional. She goes into detail by telling the story of a girl named Jennifer Gratz, a white applicant rejected from her dream college. Jennifer claimed that though she had worked extremely hard to have polished credentials, she fell short to a minority student with the same GPA and test scores all because of race. After being rejected, Gratz pursued a lawsuit against the University of Michigan, raising the question if affirmative action is still need in higher education (Hull 31). Gratz and Hull are not alone on the defense side of affirmative action. In his article “University Affirmative Action Admissions Policies Are Toxic,” Robert Cherry asserts that “affirmative action admissions policies disportionately accept students with lower-than-average test score and grades. As a result, they are not adequately prepared for the rigors of top-tier universities.” In making this comment, Cherry clearly favors for affirmative action to be taken out of higher education. He supports his argument with data that suggest that minorities are not performing as well as whites because some colleges lower their standards in order to accept more minorities. Implying that this only discourages minorities and puts them in situations where they can not reach their full potential. Both arguments make very good points, yet they seem to miss the big picture, which is that the benefits of affirmative action outweigh the downsides
Up and until this point in time, the court has generally ruled that promoting educational diversity is in fact a compelling state objective, but in today’s America, educational diversity has been established and is thriving. In this day and age, using race as a factor in college admissions is not needed. The Fourteenth amendment ensures the equal protection of the law to each and every citizen. We may not discriminate in order to promote
Hunter Johnson CRN 10774 Term Paper Political Actors are not just any elected officials, but they can be any organization, group, or person that has an influence on any political issue. In the Texas affirmative action case, many political actors are involved. Edward Blum runs a group who is working on ending affirmative action. He was along side Abigail Fisher helping her though this case. Another political actor was Justice Clarence Thomas.
Affirmative action was designed by the federal government and seemed to be a strong tactic but there are many imperfections in this policy. For example, California vs Bakke is a famous court case based off of reverse discrimination. A white male by the name Allan Bakke was denied admission to The University of California medical school. Instead of picking Bakke the school accepted a less qualified black male because the school must accept at least 16 minorities out of 100 into the medical program. The university uses race as an aid to admit minorities and increase diversity instead of accepting well qualified individuals.
Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States founded primarily for the education of African Americans. Prior to the mid-1960s, HBCUs were virtually the only institutions open to African Americans due to the vast majority of predominantly white institutions prohibiting qualified African Americans from acceptance during the time of segregation. As such, they are institutional products of an era of discrimination and socially constructed racism against African Americans (Joseph, 2013). Successfully, millions of students have been educated in spite of limited resources, public contempt, accreditation violations, and legislative issues. The purpose of this research paper is to discuss
For many individuals, this may seem like an advantage, but for others, this is just another form of discrimination. Affirmative Action should not be a deciding factor on whether or not a student gets accepted to ensure that everyone gets an equal opportunity. Several of the students who take advantage of Affirmative Action often don't meet the requirements needed to be accepted into an institution. This allows the students who were admitted to receive a “heads up” just by means of being unrepresented.
For an example, that diversity in higher education provides an educational advantage for all students, both personally and intellectually (Affirmative action, ncsl.com). Even though this is in many ways true, the admission to one school should not be determined by the color of one’s skin or someones historical descent, but for the academic merits, and even though, it is very true that in average disadvantaged groups tend to grow up with less opportunities, there should be no preference, affirmative action should be applied by preparing students for higher education or to defend them for discrimination but not to give them preference. Shelby Steels, Ph. D. from the Santa Clara university, said that admitting poorly qualified students into universities will not only harm the better qualified ones, but it will also harm the lesser qualified ones by putting them in a position for which they are not prepared, or qualified (pardon the redundancy), and will end up dropping out (Shelby, 1992). This might not be the case for many subjects, but reality is that jobs and schools have requirements that are meant to be completed in order to successfully fulfill the ties required for the
Affirmative Action: The Illusion of Racial Equality In response to racial justice riots at universities around 1968, institutions started to enforce affirmative action—a mandate to favor members of minority groups in order to promote racial equality. In his autobiography, Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez argues against this policy, drawing from personal experience as a middle-class minority student conventionalized as the poster child of immigrant success. When affirmative action admitted lower-income minority students into college, many of them struggled to do well. Rodriguez blames this not on race, but on the inadequate primary and secondary education these students had received, stating “…the university officials who so diligently took
courses in college that have opened up my mind to the issue. The more information I learn about this issue, the more surprised I am that our society still exhibits bias, because as much as the United States preaches about equality, it appears as if society has segregation in minor ways. Although the debate between whether there are biased questions on the SATs or not seems to favor that there aren’t by popular opinions, there is still biased behavior occurring in school systems that prevent certain groups of students from getting the proper resources needed. Because I would like to work in an low-income area, which most likely would contain minorities, as a teacher I would make the effort to help those students get the sufficient help needed. This motivates me to become a part of the education field, because caring teachers are much needed in area like this.
At least four Supreme Court justices believe that affirmative action is unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts has said that “the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race”. This viewpoint offers no differentiation between “race consciousness” and “racism”, but is a quite common opinion. This sort of viewpoint is what may drive America towards class-based rather than race-based affirmative action. Because of the disparities in income and wealth, minorities are as likely as whites to benefit under a class-based policy.
As far as morality and justice are concerned, if a school or business or government declines to practice affirmative action, that’s okay” – says the
In the US laws and policies were established to address extended history of discriminations against minorities. These laws and administrative practices were called affirmative action, which strived to equalize the disparity each individual must overcome in order to achieve his/her goals to offset challenges such as racism, sexism, prejudice that may arise, the undeniably factual and unfair disadvantages. The laws and guidelines included government and private sector programs that focus on access to education and employment, granting special consideration minorities and women. Some whites criticize affirmative action arguing the policies are contrary to discrimination.
Throughout many of the affirmative action legal cases, one of the main arguments from proponents is that it is necessary in order to right the wrongs of past racial discrimination. Some say that affirmative action is justified because even though white applicants may be more qualified, this is only because they did not face the same hardships as their minority counterparts (Rachels, Ethics, 1973). Many argue if we do not integrate disadvantaged minorities into mainstream social institutions, they will continue to suffer the discrimination that has plagued our country for centuries and that this is detrimental to not only the minorities but also society as a whole (Anderson, 2002, 1270–71). However, the debate has recently shifted to the benefits of diversity in the classroom which the Supreme Court has affirmed as being a positive thing
You did a good job on explaining about the affirmative action. Further, you provide the specific example on the affirmative minority groups is the women. I think this example have clearly defined the strength of the affirmative action. I agree with you that affirmative action is to the way to ensure the equivalent opportunity and access among people (Lecture 2). For the weakness of this action, I think you should add more information.
The real problem with affirmative action is that minority groups are being stigmatized and treated differently because their success could be deemed as unearned. Also universities are admitting minority students so their campus can be “diverse” but aren’t putting in the effort to make sure these students are actually succeeding in college and graduating. Universities are admitting students who are not prepared for college, therefore the same students that just got admitted are not graduating. For example, 41% of Hispanics and 42% of blacks are required to take a remedial Math or English before entering a college level coarse compared to 30% of white student. The average college graduation rate for a blacks is 39.7% and the average rate for
Pros: In most standard classroom settings, a populace of students are presented a series of data, and required to comprehend and find application to aforementioned data. In cases that affirmative action fights for, it simply lets the students speak for themselves based on already lived, real-life applications. These additives to diversity can lend great amounts of knowledge into any discussion, and provides many with other viewpoints for overall considerations for any given topic of conversation. ‘…what some students say in random conversations in and outside campus classrooms might be so insightful, and so unlikely and difficult to be learned in any other way besides these random conversations, that it is worth denying admission to some white and Asian American students because of their race so that other white and Asian American students