Essay About Affirmative Action And Affermative Action

Affermative Action
Essay title: Affermative Action
Affirmative Action
Affirmative Action efforts were started in 1964 to end the long history of
overlooking qualified people of color and women from higher education. Affirmative
Action sets standards for a business or office of admissions, so that a white man does not
have the upper-hand over an equally or greater educated minority. The initial way the
government tried to justify Affirmative Action was to develop a human resource
approach: first identifying the problem, which is racism then establishing the solution
(Phillips 67).
The intent of Affirmative Action helps cut down discrimination in the work place
and in schools, despite the fact that some believe that affirmative action is a form of
reverse discrimination. In contrast, the first goal of Affirmative Action was to help
people who were poor or badly educated, elevating them to positions for which they were
not objectively qualified (Buckley 95). Cousens, author of Public Civil Rights Agencies
and Fair Employment indicates that the Affirmative Action techniques have the
advantage of not only persuading employers not to discriminate when hiring or accepting,
but to expand employment and educational opportunities for minority groups (22).
Therefore, Affirmative Action is legitimate because it does reduce discrimination in the
work place and related areas such as University acceptance of college students. In the
end, it should in no way be abolished.
However, Affirmative action is highly controversial. Right now Proposition 209,
in California which bans all programs involving race and sex preferences run by the state,
has passed but it will not be put into total action due to some questions of
constitutionality (Ayres 34). The law will start slowly first, ending Affirmative Action in
the schools of California, leading up to the abolishment of Affirmative Action all
together. An argument was declared by Mark Rosenbaum of the Southern California
Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, “ Proposition 209 should be
declared unconstitutional because it singles out women and minorities and, at a time
when discrimination still exists, sought to preclude them from attaining constitutionally
guaranteed right, like jobs and schooling.” (Ayres 34). As Rosenbaum pointed out,
discrimination does still exist in our not so perfect world, and so far Affirmative Action is
our only solution; so why is California trying so hard to put an end to it? Abolishing
Affirmative Action is not the answer. President Clinton spoke out in his speech for
National Archives: “ Let me be clear: Affirmative Action has been good for America, we
should have a simple slogan: Mend it, but don’t bend it”(Benac). Without even trying to
change the way Affirmative Action is implemented, California is ending it first. This will
prove detrimental to Californian society because it will cause more racial problems.
The problem with the Affirmative Action debate could be that those arguing for it
do a poor job defending their position. Due to the fact that Affirmative Action has been
in place for more than a generation, critics have lost sight of how the job market and
higher education looks without Affirmative Actions stabilizing effects. Yet critics think
that Affirmative Action is a cleverly disguised form of racism and ineffective, but taking
a look at what happens when there is no Affirmative