Affirmative action was first proposed by Vice President Richard Nixon in 1959, and would be expanded upon during the civil rights era in the 1960s to end discrimination, and be away for white people to atone for what they had done to minorities in the past. Affirmative action allows minorities who are stricken by poverty to be accepted into school that they would otherwise not be. Thought this program had good intentions and heart, in reality it would only cause discrimination to become worse. Affirmative actions must be abandoned due to the negative impact it has on our colleges.
There are a lot of arguments that defend the use of affirmative action and advocate its effect on college campuses. Supporters of affirmative action believe that no matter what we do minorities will always be at a disadvantaged and affirmative action is the only way to close the racial gap. Supporters believe that minorities could never be given a fair chance at attending college unless affirmative action is adopted into the school acceptance program. Supporters
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According to an L.A. Times survey done in 1987, when colleges admits minorities through affirmative action their performance often shows that problems have not been solved. “The survey presented evidence that around 90 percent of regularly admitted UCLA students pass the California bar exam, while the passing rate for students admitted under affirmative action only 30 percent" (Finley 1). The problem is that many minorities are already at a disadvantage when the time comes to apply for colleges. It can only place underqualified minorities into a difficult college environment that discourages all of its students and develops. Instead of focusing our attentions on colleges we should instead focus on the early school years that are preparing students for the tough years to
In 2008, Abigail Fisher, a white female, applied for admission at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1997, Texas passed legislation which guaranteed all students who graduate in the top 10% of Texas’ graduating class, admission to all Texas state-funded universities, regardless of other factors. Fisher did not qualify for Texas’ “Top 10%” with a GPA of 3.59 and an SAT score of 1180, but applied for general admission in the top 12% of her class. At the University of Texas, about 75% of admissions are comprised of students who qualified as Texas’ “Top 10%”, and 25% of admissions are based on several factors including, but are not limited to, grade-point average, extracurricular activities, and race. When Fisher was denied admission, she enrolled
Katznelson’s argument that affirmative action policies were enacted with purposeful, deliberate discrimination is convincing. Namely, he considers the historical context that would have shaped Americans at the time and swayed their opinions. For example, Katznelson references the Civil War and the end of slavery, and how these events shaped the attitudes of key players like the Southern Democrats, which would then result in the faulty policies that perpetuated affirmative action’s favoritism of whites. His evidence is sufficient as well. Katznelson highlights the trend of Southern Democrats interfering in affirmative action policies and the footholds they had in specific acts.
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
The late 1960’s and early 1970’s was a time of unrest in the United States. America was in the middle of a civil rights movement, American racism was nearly at its breaking point. In 1968 Martin Luther King, a civil rights activist, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. That same year the Association of American Medical Colleges made a recommendation to open up nearly twelve percent to first year medical school classes to minority students(McNeese pg. 14).
Is affirmative action still necessary for guaranteeing equal access to educational opportunities at elite universities and graduate schools? Should admissions decisions be based solely on academic criteria and merit? Key Words: affirmative action, Grutter V. Bollinger, and diversity. Grutter V. Bollinger Research Paper 3 Affirmative Action in Education Affirmative action was formed more than fifty years ago.
Affirmative Action Reader pg. 244 “ those many in our society that are darker, poorer, more identifiably foreign will continue to suffer the poverty, marginalization, immersion and incarceration.” Statistics are staggering Racial Disparities in Incarceration African Americans constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population, they are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites, what’s shocking is that one in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001 and if the trends continues one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. I am for affirmative action, as I believe that when the late President John F Kennedy signed the affirmative action on March 6th 1961,
If Affirmative Action stays in effect, nothing further should be done by the United States government, African Americans have all the civil rights that white Americans have and if they face discrimination as a result of their race, they have opportunities to remedy the
The Supreme Court has not offered an opinion on affirmative action in higher education since its 1978 ruling in Regents of the Univ. Of California v. Bakke. In that determination, the Supreme Courts Justice Powell argued that a university could take race into account as one among a number of factors in student admissions for the purposed of achieving student body diversity. Since the time of this ruling, affirmative action programs with regard to student admissions, financial assistance, and even faculty employment have been founded mainly on achieving diversity. Since the Bakke decision, affirmative action has been an increasingly contentious issue between those in favor of its employment and those opposed to it.
Take the SAT for example. Some critics argue that some questions in the SAT verbal section favor white students by using language that is familiar to them and not to non-white students. A Harvard study on this topic that supports this opinion cited reports that black students of equal academic aptitude to white students scored lower on this section. Others believe that it’s not just the SAT questions that are the problem.
The fear is that without this policy, diversity will not always happen if left up to chance. It is true that schools and other organizations have discriminated against women and people of other race. This problem created an unfair advantage for males of the superior race. Supporters also charge that without affirmative action African Americans would have a more difficult process of being admitted into prestigious and predominately white universities (Hopkins, 2010). Affirmative Action allows minorities to reflect different areas of study and work that otherwise would have never been considered.
Weak affirmative action which is just an effort to ensure that all qualified minority groups are considered whereas the strong one is when some sort of preference is given to the minority candidate. Later the author concludes that he will focus on the strong affirmative action because it is the most controversial one. Then the author gives us many arguments of different people and critics for and against affirmative action. Later on, David Boonin gives us his own arguments in favor of affirmative action which are 1) the unfair disadvantage argument; 2) the (other) compensation argument; 3) the appeal to diversity; 4) the need for role models; 5) the bias-elimination argument; 6) race as a qualification. “I conclude that while affirmative action may prove to have some desirable features and some beneficial consequences, there’s no reason to believe that it’s morally obligatory.
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
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once had a dream in which he calls for an end to racism in the U.S. and calls for civil and economic rights. So much has changed since then, but there are still problems that are in the process of being solved. When a person treats a group differently because of that group 's religion, it 's unfair. For a character who has different beliefs, it should not address them the right to criticize another individual. Nowadays, humans judge other humans by the way there features stand out.