Affirmative Action In America

“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

Affirmative action means advancing gradually to eliminate discrimination, to prevent its reversion, and to offer new opportunities that before were repulsed to women and minorities. While recent studies have demonstrate that reverse discrimination is sporadic, sometimes employers use illegal preferences or quotas, usually an unwillingness to prepare an appropriate affirmative action plan or out of ignorance. Former President Johnson confessed “We seek…not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and a result.” Griggs v. Duke Power Company case is relevant for this argument. The plaintiff in Griggs’s case argued that the high school diploma and testing requirements discriminated against African-Americans and thus violated Title VII.

Both “Affirmative Action for Dummies” by Tim Wise and “Affirmative Action: Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education” made me think about how over the years, affirmative action has evolved from the civil war era to the twentieth century to now. I agree how Tim Wise uses the difference between institutional racism and affirmative action to explain his view on the subject. He describes affirmative action and discrimination as two separate concepts, one based on a larger social structure and the other based on color and race. I also agree with the fact that both terms have historical impacted history in two separate ways. Historical events such as Plessy vs Ferguson case and the addition of the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments challenged many

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

RESEARCH PAPER Affirmative action is a set of governmental policies which tend to give privileges to minorities who suffered from discrimination in the past by providing them with access to educational and employment opportunities. First nuanced by Franklin Roosevelt with war-related work, Affirmative action only became an executive order (10925) in 1961 under John F. Kennedy to ensure that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin, to which was later on added sex by Lyndon Johnson in 1965 (11246). From that day till now affirmative action has been a controversial issue in America, with some who find it fair and some other who consider it as a reverse discrimination.

An article from Heritage.org states that “Affirmative action-induced low grades are a serious problem—as demonstrated by research over the course of the last decade. For example, in one study of top law schools, more than 50 percent of African-American law students (many of whom had been admitted pursuant to affirmative action policies) were in the bottom 10 percent of their class. And the dropout rate among African-American students was more than twice that of their white peers (19.3 percent vs. 8.2 percent)” (Slattery). This information ties directly into the “Hopwood v. Texas ” case of 1996, in which “Texas Legislature adopted the Top 10 Percent Law.

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.

I personally relate to this post as I am a minority, being both African American and a female, as well as a science major. Although Hrabowski emphasized the ways professors and those higher up in the education system can shape college successes, I know that it requires equal effort from us students as well. After all, my education and success lies within my

Only 75 percent of blacks have received post-high school education, compared to 85 percent of whites. Not surprisingly, blacks on average also make less money than whites” (Philip M. Deutsch). It’s unjust that people of color are treated as inferior to white people, and it is that kind of social issue that interferes with the liberties of all Americans of

A new study may bring up arguments that the average test scores of African-American students trail those of white students not just because of economic disadvantages, but because some parts of the test result in differential scores by race for students of equal academic prowess. "The confirmation of unfair test results throws into question the validity of the test and, consequently, all decisions based on its results. “All admissions decisions based exclusively or predominantly on SAT performance—and therefore access to higher education institutions and subsequent job placement and professional success—appear to be biased against the African American minority group and could be exposed to legal challenge," says the study, which has just appeared in Harvard Educational Review.” (Jaschik) The presence of racial patterns on the SAT is not new.

For countless years, there has been deliberate bigotry against people of color all around the world. However, today in America the social prejudice against the African American race has become almost entirely a thing of the past. Researchers argue that the discrimination people of color face has lessened over time and the barriers between whites and blacks have weakened. Education in America has changed significantly to benefit all races since the 1920’s. Education is an essential part in any person’s life no matter their race and every person should be able to receive the same opportunities.

Martha Peraza SOC 3340 Inequality in Education California State University, Bakersfield Abstract In the United States, there exists a gap in equality for different demographics of students. The factors contributing to educational disadvantages include socioeconomic struggles, gender of students, language or culture, and particularly for the scope of this paper, race.

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.

In “Net (Race) Neutral: An Essay on How GPA + (reweighted) SAT - Race = Diversity,” Christine Goodman illustrates the opposing viewpoints in regards to the racial discriminatory efforts by the college institutions to help diversify the incoming freshman class. With this, Goodman provides statistics and opinions of experts on the matter, which includes comparison of such discriminatory acts against other institutions. To begin, she brings up an enlightening, yet controversial court case decision: Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (2013). This court case demonstrates significance to this topic because it counteracts a previous court case, Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), which, “upheld diversity as a compelling interest that would justify narrowly

It’s unfortunate that even in today’s society that institutional racism is something that happens in the everyday life of many people, especially minorities such as African Americans and Hispanics. Koppelman (2014) defines institutional racism as “establish laws, customs, and practices that systematically reflect and produce racial inequities in American society” (Koppelman, 2014, p. 189). One example of where institutional racism is prevalent is in standardized testing in schools. There has always been a question of whether standardized testing, in particular the SAT’s, have been fair to minority students. Even though the SAT board feels that the test has been researched to include questions that give students from different races and