Essay on Abolishing Affirmative Action

Affirmative action is a policy or a program that seeks to redress past discrimination of minorities through active measures in order to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment. In other words, it is policy that was established to hopefully eliminate racial preference and equalize the United States. The fight against discrimination has been a long lasting one that started with the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, which ended in the desegregation of all schools (Ficker). Affirmative action was put into place in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Executive Order that mandated government contractors to “take affirmative action” in all aspects of hiring and employing minorities (Brunner). Upon its arrival, the policy

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.

Affirmative Action is one of the many social issues facing America today. Affirmative action was signed into place in 1961 by President Kennedy and allows minority groups or people who face discrimination to become employed or get an education that is equal to that of a white male. Groups that Affirmative Action aims to help are women, blacks, Latinos, and people with disabilities. While these policies were signed to slowly rid the workforce and schools from discrimination, it hurts people who do not face discrimination, specifically whites. Many white men and women lose special opportunities to work or go to college because of certain standards that the Affirmative Action laws require. Universities and the military require a certain number of minorities in order to meet the standards and have a more diverse atmosphere. An example of this is the California V. Bakke supreme court case of 1978.

According to Newman, affirmative action is a “program designed to seek out members of minority groups for positions from which they had previously been excluded, thereby seeking to overcome some institutional racism” (Newman, 536). Affirmative action made its debut with a piece of legislature passed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and continues to this day. However, the concept of affirmative action is a controversial issue that continues to be hotly debated.

What is it? Well affirmative action is, in plain text, the consideration of your class, race, gender, color, ethnicity, national origin, and disability when deciding who gets a certain job or admission into a school. If you are amenity applying for a job and there are other people that are applying as well then you will be considered for the job over one of the other people, even if they have more experience. It is not only for jobs, it is also used in any situation that there is a minority or different person, racially or ethnicity, because the particular business or corporation needs to have some minorities working in that business or in that school. They do this because of a government law or because they

Affirmative action is intended to promote the opportunities of the protected classes within a society to give them equal access to that of the privileged majority population.

The purpose of affirmative action is to ensure equal opportunity for minorities. But it has strayed from its original intent and has become largely a program to achieve not equal opportunity but equal results. It is a system of quotas forced upon American businesses and working class by the federal government. A law which forces people to look at race before looking at the individual cannot promote equal opportunity. Affirmative action continues the judgement of minorities by race; it causes reverse discrimination, and contradicts its purpose.

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.

Affirmative Action is a policy aimed to improving educational and employment opportunities for African Americans, women and other minorities. Affirmative Action is significant because it has been effective for allowing the underrepresented to obtain career and educational goals. Many African Americans were admitted into predominately white schools and careers due to Affirmative Action. Affirmative action programs play a critically important role in the black experience in America because they originated as techniques designed to promote equality for blacks after equal opportunity techniques alone proved inadequate to secure equality for blacks. The use of these programs led to more black presence or representation in some national institutions,

Colleges and Universities are still trying to move beyond race-based admissions. In the case of a young woman who applied to the University of Washington who talks about her home life with her father abusing her mother and her mother abusing drugs. This essay from the high school senior impacted the readers into helping to ban affirmative action from university admissions. In February, Florida joined the growing number of states that struck affirmative action from admissions. California in 1996, voters eliminated race-based admissions policies, and the same year, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did the same in Texas in Hopwood vs. State of Texas. The University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Virginia have elected to significantly reduce the role of

(Goldman, 1976, p. 181) An affirmative action program is a management tool designed to ensure equal employment opportunity. A central premise underlying affirmative action is that, absent discrimination, over time a contractor's workforce, generally, will reflect the gender, racial and ethnic profile of the labour pools from which the contractor recruits and selects.

According to Raymond A. Noe, affirmative action is an organization’s active effort to find opportunities to hire or promote people in a particular group (Fundamentals of Human Resource Management 68). There are various arguments for and against affirmative action. Some believe that it gives certain groups of people an equal opportunity to find employment where they would otherwise be kicked under the rug. Others believe that even though it creates an opportunity for minority groups, the issue of reverse discrimination comes into play where once predominantly white male jobs offerings go to women and minority groups instead. The topic of affirmative action remains very controversial and

Affirmative Action has been an issue of contention since its inception during the Civil Rights struggles of mid 20th century America. Discrimination could no longer be tolerated and the Unites States government had an obligation to encourage equality at all levels of the social infrastructure. The main type of discrimination being addressed by Affirmative Action programs was racial discrimination. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines racism as: ‘a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.’ The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination of any kind, laid the foundation for the introduction of Affirmative Action

Racism is a problem that is older than the country we live in. Since the beginning of time racism, prejudice, and discrimination has existed. Through the years, society has come a long way in dealing with this everlasting problem; however, the problem still lives in today's world. It affects who we are and where we will go in our life. So if racism can so dramatically alter our life, one might question what can be done to cease this unfair practice? One solution, or rather method to equal out the past inequalities African American and other minorities, is Affirmative Action. The basic goal of these policies is to increase opportunities for minorities in the United States job market and educational system. Yet one might also question if