Affirmative Action In America

There are many supporters and opponents of Affirmative Action. The focus of Affirmative action is meant to be an attempt at equality throughout society. Every sector in America would be equal and unprejudiced. On the other hand, adopting affirmative action would force many employers to replace hard-working employees with those possibly less qualified simply due to their gender or ethnicity. Throughout history, people have been categorized into different groups. These groupings were based on certain characteristics people shared, whether it was their ethnicity, race, gender, or religion. Society is notorious for distinguishing among different groups and favoring one or two of them. Undoubtedly, this separation of peoples, led to increased tension between various groups. As time progressed, the conflicts intensified, and it became apparent that a change was necessary. So I intend to educate the reader on the origin of Affirmative Action; how it impacted the American society; is it still needed in today’s environment; what are some of the drawbacks or issues that came from implementing Affirmative Action, and finally what is the most beneficial aspect from Affirmative Action. One of the most famous quotes about Affirmative Action comes from President Lyndon Johnson who explained the rationale behind the use of affirmative action to achieve equal opportunity in a 1965 speech: “You do not take a person, who for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring

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.

Many white people believe that affirmative action is not fair and limits their chances of acceptance when applying to college or jobs. But what they do not know is affirmative action has be proven to help Caucasian females more than any other race or gender. The reason why is because affirmative action does not only aid people other

Affirmative action legislation in the United States has its basic framework in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which mandates that firms with more than 15 employees are subject to a variety of anti-discrimination policies, more of which were passed in subsequent years. In some cases, the concept of affirmative action was taken to be a voluntary act to attain diversity. For the most part, however, courts have interpreted affirmative action laws as having little teeth under the Constitution. It has been suggested that "racial preferences in federal law or policy are a remedy of last resort" (Dale, 2005)

     At one time, affirmative action was a needed and legitimate policy. Segregation has existed way too much in the past and has left people out of jobs, out of certain areas of town, and schooling. We needed to make a law that would get rid of segregation, and help everybody assimilate or just live peacefully without discrimination. When a majority the southern where rebelling and would not allow African Americans in their stores, schools, etc,

Affirmative Action has had a very tumultuous 54-year history. Affirmative action was a strategy that forged the Civil Rights Movement in response to the prejudiced approach toward African American citizens in the United States. The policy advocates that black citizens in particular conditions to avoid the unfairness they would usually receive. To try and explain why the methods and laws needed to be adjusted to be equal for everyone. It is essential to realize that 20 Africans came to America in 1619, records are not clear if they were slaves or indentured servants. It was until 1640 when the first African in Jamestown Virginia was declared a slave. The Court ordered that the slave had to serve his master for the rest of his life. The slaves made to work long hours and numerous slaves’ endured inhuman treatment and underwent severe injuries. American citizens in the South challenged a lengthy campaign to seek to continue to be permitted to own slaves but through Lincoln and abolitionist slave-owning was ultimately banished.

Many opponents believe affirmative action has outlived its usefulness, because the U.S. has progressed into a nation seemingly free of racism. They argue than in turn it is now going too far in the other direction: discriminating against whites. Preferential treatment of the undeserved passes over better-qualified individuals, leading to reverse discrimination. Here the question of preferences comes in to place, is the son of a successful African-American doctor more deserving

Affirmative Action remains one of the more complicated and controversial topics dealt with in American society. Affirmative Action is an action or policy designed to protect specific groups who suffer from discrimination, and provide them with programs and special opportunities. These government or private programs were designed to set right historical injustices towards the members of these groups who have suffered things like employment and educational disadvantages from racial discrimination. The goal for these actions are to redress past wrong doings by fixing things like inequalities in employment and pay, as well as increasing opportunities for education. By achieving this, the outcome would restore equal access and opportunity in favor of the members of these groups. These groups generally consist of certain minorities that have suffered from social ills such as slavery and segregation.

Affirmative Action is an outcome of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement. Its purpose is to provide equal opportunities for members of minority groups and women in education and employment. It is not until 1961 did the term “affirmative action” was first used by President John F. Kennedy. He made it very clear in an Executive Order that directed government have to take “affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” Since a lot of cooperation still tends to hire white male, by enforcing affirmative action, the number of minority groups and women in the labor force will increase.Affirmative Action helps to eliminate the imbalance in the society and reform the American system. The US Department of Labor describes affirmative action as the banning of discrimination.

Racial discrimination occurs everyday to many different people. In America,the individuals who are usually discriminated against are the minorities like African Americans and Hispanics. Affirmative action is a policy that was created and has been claimed to be positive discrimination. The policy was created to give equal opportunity to groups of people who are usually discriminated against. Although Affirmative action has been named to be positive and support minorities, it is still unjust. There should be no positive aspects of racial discrimination. Many believe that it is only racial discrimination or racist if a caucasian person discriminates against a person of color but do not consider it racism if it happens to be the other way around. Racial Discrimination in any form is harmful which is why affirmative action policies are not correct.

Even though they had that already, we can all learn together, right? We truly believe that affirmative action did set us on a wonderful path to help those who yearn for education and the workforce to have an equal chance just like everybody else; also, helps America become a more equal and diverse nation for all people. Everyone has the right to choose their career and academic goals, DO NOT decide for them because of the stereotypical image we all portray them as. If they want to be a Doctor, then we better see a whole lot of minority doctors. If the Whites get to have the same academic goals and higher learning like the minorities, then fine. Let them. Maybe this will take them off the “golden pedestal” for a while. ¬¬How does the “Ten Percent Rule” fall into affirmative action?

However, Affirmative Action was initially created to tackle the discrimination of blacks. Over the years, random testing has been conducted to analyze America’s social structure and the level of racial divide. The Fair Employment Council of Greater Washington Inc. did some testing between 1992 and 1994. The studies discovered that blacks were treated worse than whites 24 percent of the time when interviewing for jobs. In fact, when a car dealership conducted interviews, the black candidate was offered a car washing position while the white candidate, with identical qualifications, was offered a sales position. White males maintain 97 percent of the senior management positions in Fortune 1000 companies. The unemployment rate of whites is less than half that of blacks. The poverty rate in the black community hovers around 26 percent. The poverty rate for whites is 9 percent. The inequality between white and black America is alarming and Affirmative Action is desperately needed to establish some sense of equality. The fight for equal opportunity begins with the government, and all government agencies have made a concerted effort to establish Affirmative Action programs. The United States Department of Labor offers this statement on its website:

There are three applicants for the job offering. One applicant is a white male age 35 who has six years of on the job experience. The other three are an Asian female, black male, and white female. Two of these minority applicants have no practical experience and the other only a few years. In order for the company to meet the quota, the company must automatically reject the white male and only look at the other three applicants. The company now is no longer looking for good experienced employees; instead, they are trying to appear fair. This so called ?equal opportunity? is not what it says. This means that they provide ?equal opportunity for minorities.? They are now discriminating against majorities, which goes against the original initiative for civil rights.

Lastly many people think that the policies are no longer needed and that they lead to more problems than it had it solve. They say that Affirmative action leads to the opposite, reverse discrimination, lowering standards of responsibility to perform better and would lead in a nation that would be a “color-blind society”. Affirmative action is designed to end discrimination and unfair action of workers/schoolchildren

At the Affirmative Action debate at Irvine Valley College, there was positive and negative aspects of the event, but overall was a fantastic group of debaters and topic! The most prevalent issues I had were their pace and articulatory faults. Although the debater’s topic and speeches were effective and written well, it was difficult to hear them clearly at times. A common dilemma that occurred multiple times, would be that the speaker saw that they were running out of time and started to speed up their pace. It made the speech sound rushed and as they spoke faster, their words would combine. Leading to the problem with their articulatory faults of muffled month, as if their tongue could not keep up with their mind. (Ross and Leonard 219) I