Affirmative action has become obsolete in today’s society. Affirmative action is an active effort to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups and women; also: a similar effort to promote the rights or progress of other disadvantaged persons (Merriam-Webster, 2011). Today’s affirmative action will demoralize the very concepts that the policy was implemented to uphold: those of equality for all people regardless of color and discrimination. This policy supports racial multiplicity at the price of distinction, impartiality and experience; it also follows the line of reverse discrimination and sexual bias against white men (Reyna, Tucker, Korfmacher, & Henry, 2005). Individuals that advance on their …show more content…
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. These allies also see Affirmative action as a way to compensate and repay minorities for the decades upon decades of slavery and oppression, two hundred forty-five years to be exact. Supporters place the argument that labels are made to identify cultural strengths or obstacles that and that minority status is a framework for the interpretation or determination of what constitutes achievement (Butler …show more content…
The Affirmative Action policy was intended to be “unique” to assist all disadvantaged groups with stress being on the importance of moral character (NOW, 2010 ). In actuality, the policy actively promotes reverse discrimination, as employers are required by law to hire and promote disadvantage persons regardless of attaining the qualification and credentials needed for the position. Employees are then ordered to train and allow the new hire to “shadow” them, just to find that the new hire will become their supervisor. This policy is also practiced in the United States military, as quotas are set for the promotion of minorities and women in an effort to endorse diversity (The White House, 1999). In reality the policy destroys the camaraderie and team building as unqualified individuals is advanced ahead of those with proven track records. In addition, College Admission boards are also required to screen applications based on quotas that has been established by the affirmative action policy in an effort to promote diversity (James, 2010). American college testing [ATC] and Scholastic Test [SAT] scores are used to forecast future freshman grades and is the basis for entrance into prominent universities. Despite low ACT and SAT scores, black students who are unprepared scholastically are admitted into universities only to later struggle academically (Kahlenberg, 1996). Does it matter if
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
Shelby Steele’s perspective about affirmative action is that it’s didn’t help African Americans achieve equality. Continuously, he believes that affirmative action only reinforces the misconception that people should be treated differently according to their outward appearance. Affirmative action is created to improve opportunities for minorities in employment and education. Like any legalization, affirmative action has positive and negative sides, however I disagree with Shelby Steele that negative effect on minorities. In our country, we have decades of racial, economical, and social inequality for minorities, and affirmative action tries to address that disparity.
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
After reading the book “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria” written by Beverly Daniel Tatum, I was left wanting more information on process-oriented and goal-oriented equality programs. Tatum quickly visits these two points in roughly two paragraphs, so I sought out other outside resources to better understand the two terms and how they interact with affirmative action. First, affirmative action is described as "any measure, beyond simple termination of a discriminatory practice, adopted to correct or compensate for past or present discrimination or to prevent discrimination from recurring in the future." (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Statement on Affirmative Action, October 1977). In other words, a program
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.
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.
Herbert Hill strongly believes we should adopt a strong affirmative active action policies that mandate quotes and/or timetables. He also argues there must be some benchmark, and some tangible measures of change. Hill states a system based on race existed for many generations under the U.S. Constitution. This system defined black people as property not as human beings. In the Dred Scott Decision of 1857, Chief Justice Taylor declares that black people have not rights and they are just articles of merchandise.
Institutional racism is inevitable in the United States. Institutional racism is constantly occurring, whether it be in the work force, schools, or the criminal justice system. The color of one’s skin is a determining factor for his success in a company, and whether or not he ends up in the court systems, and for how long. Although laws such as the Thirteenth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, and Fifteenth Amendment have been put in place to avoid racism in America and give black people equal rights, institutional racism is still holding African Americans back.
A specific study conducted in January of 2009 helped further promote this idea using groups of nonblack students that believed they were being recruited for a team building program. A white actor and a black actor were placed in a group of students and the white actor made a racist comment regarding the black actor. The majority of students who witnessed the exchange firsthand did not report being offended by the racist comments and chose the caucasian actor as their partner. This supported the study’s claim that racist behavior is still quite prevalent and showed that these attitudes may be “so deeply ingrained that protective legislation and affirmative action programs are required to overcome them (Eben
Racial issues are sometimes dismissed as history; they are thought of as issues of the past. People sometimes believe that since the government preaches equality, that most racial issues are resolved. This is not the case in today’s society, as racial issues are still prevalent in everyday life. Not only facing discriminatory practices in the job market, minorities face racism in many different aspects of everyday life. In the world we live in today, people tend to judge a whole group of people based on the actions of only a few.
Ira Katznelson is the author of When Affirmative Action Was White, a historical analysis of the history of affirmative action and racial inequality in the United States of America. Katznelson takes a definitive approach to the history of legislation and inequalities and prepares the reader initially with his title. Katznelson’s argumentative position and approach to the title of his book makes the reader question about affirmative action for white Americans, but in reality what Katznelson means by his title, When Affirmative Action Was White, is more based on the social programs and federal grant opportunities that were created and provided to Americans during the Roosevelt and Truman administration. Katznelson argument encompasses historical
Another thing that places students of color at a disadvantage in college admissions is the persisting cultural bias in high-stakes testing. “High-stakes” tests are those that are tied to major consequences, such as admission to college, or even high school graduation. Fair education reform advocates have long been citing an extensive record of standardized testing concerns, many of which relate to racial bias and discrimination. As researcher and author Harold Berlak explains in the journal Rethinking Education: Standardized testing perpetuates institutionalized racism and contributes to the achievement gap between whites and minorities. For instance, the deeply embedded stereotype that African Americans perform poorly on standardized tests
However, with diversity comes inequalities that people of color face throughout their lives. A particular issue in the United States, specifically in education, is unequal opportunities and treatment in regard to race. Research shows that students from single-parent black families had a high chance of dropping out and participating in illicit behavior (Hallinan 54). While the issue of race is a complicated issue to breach for
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