This is my Feedback from the instructor before I turn in the final draft: 1. Continue to work on developing your ideas further and integrating research to support your claims. Also, continue to work on the overall organization. And – be sure to cite all borrowed material!! This must be corrected for the next draft. 2. Continue to work on paragraph development, APA format, and the overall organization.

 

 

Affirmative Action Argumentative Essay

Bridjite Jones

National American University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract

Affirmative action is considered to have the capabilities to entail policies aimed at preventing discrimination majorly based on color, race, creed, nationality, religion, and gender. Those for Affirmative Action majorly support the disadvantaged members of the society by providing equality in the access to social services previously reserved to specific members of the society. One of the major assumptions of affirmative action is that the main beneficiaries are disadvantaged in society. In reality, preferences majorly advantage marginalized communities such as scholarship applicants and admissions of students’ minority races at the expense of deserving students in the majority population. The aspect of less privilege in itself has often been misinterpreted when dealing with affirmative action. Less “privileged” people are majorly termed to be those coming from the minority groups in the society as defined by race and ethnicity, which might not always be of the case. Some individuals might come from the majority population and have the desired qualification but lack other factors like economic stability hence being discriminated against. Other challenges of affirmative action include poor performance and an increase in discrimination, resentment, and acrimony.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

In the ruling of the City of Richmond v Corson Co case, the judge stated that “The challenge of eliminating the impacts of historical prejudices is as nothing compared with the strain in eliminating from our country. The cause of those impacts, which is the tendency-fatal to the country and those that view people based on their region of origin or skin color” (Cornell Law School, 1989). An answer to the first challenge that exacerbates the second is no answer at all.” For over 25 years, Stanford University put in place appropriate policies to implement affirmative action. The school aimed at achieving its objectives by favoring racial minorities in positions such as hiring processes, tenure contracting, student admissions, and provision of financial aid.

In the research to ascertain the policy’s effectiveness, it was found that the policy had aggravated discrimination instead of addressing it (Sacks & Thiel, 1996). Originally, the policy was aimed at eliminating discrimination and racial preferences. Instead of fostering harmony and integration, the preference ended up dividing the campus into different factions that provided a different outcome. It forced the University to reevaluate its policies at a time of heightened public argument over affirmative action. One of the main assumptions of affirmative action is that racial partialities favor the underprivileged. In a real sense, preferences majorly profit minority people, such as scholarship applicants and admissions of students from middle and upper-class backgrounds at the expense of equally deserving students. In this case, if preferences are supposed to remedy disadvantage, they should be provided based on disadvantage but not on the aspects such as race and gender.

 

 

 

Against Affirmative Action

Affirmative action entails policies aimed at preventing discrimination majorly based on color, race, creed, nationality, religion, and gender. Affirmative action majorly supports the disadvantaged members of the society by providing equality in the access to social services previously reserved to specific members of the society. These services include employment, education, and housing. The idea behind affirmative action is that by promoting interactions among different groups of people, stereotypes against the minority members would reduce hence decreasing discrimination in the long term. Even though affirmative action has historically been aimed at bridging inequality gaps in society in terms of employment. Many assumptions make it a weak concept to increase access to good and quality education, enhance diversity, and address past misdoings, harms, and societal hindrances.

In USA, the case of nondiscrimination in learning institutions was first upheld in 1954 when the Supreme Court passed a ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that separate but equal doctrines dishonored the constitution. In 1961, the phrase affirmative action was coined in Executive order 10925, which encouraged employees to take action against all forms of nondiscrimination. In Executive Order 11246, all federal contractors and subcontractors were to consider underutilized minorities, evaluate their availability and consider them in the tendering process with next Executive Order 11375 later, including women as the minority in the society.

However, affirmative action has always brought controversy in the US judicial and educational sectors.

In the Regents of the University of California v Bakke case, the law court banned any racial quotas in the admission of students terming its abuse of the Equal Protection Clause. In another case in 2014, the US court ratified the use of race in the admission of undergraduate students at the University of Texas to bridge the diversity gap in the campus in which the SAT scores were not considered in the admission of African American and Hispanic students. This provision brought a lot of controversies, especially when Abigail Fisher filed a lawsuit against the University for failing to admit her in the University despite having good academic credentials. Her credentials were above those admitted African American and Hispanic students but lower than those of whites and Asians. The court considered Fisher’s arguments making Texas University abolish the policy in February 2019 in which the University agreed with the Department of Education to stop considering race as an element in the admissions procedure after concluding the 14-year use of affirmative action. The contradictions in rulings concerning affirmative action confirm the little research done by organizations before implementing the programs. Most organizations fail to consider the side effects of affirmative action programs and implement them based on mere assumptions.

One main assumptions of affirmative action are that it benefits the less privileged in the society. The aspect of less privilege has often been misinterpreted when dealing with affirmative action. As illustrated by Thomas Sowell, the less privileged people are majorly termed to be those coming from the minority groups in society (Sowell, 2015). What then happens to those who come from the majority population but lack social and economic abilities? When this question is asked, affirmative action can be seen to aggravate discrimination instead of eradicating it. The other major assumption concerning affirmative action is that preferences only provide small changes to the minority. However, no proof exists to affirm that affirmative action only gives minimum chances to the minority groups. In a fair society, all individuals have equal chances of rising into different ranks regardless of their demographic status.

 

Strong affirmative action may result in inequality in the provision of services to all in society. In the book, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein, the author illustrates that arbitrariness preferences are the major fundamental unfairness in modern society (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). One of the scenarios described by the author is why the less-qualified son of a black doctor should dislocate the daughter of the Vietnamese boat refugee? This question brings about several concerns about affirmative action. The major concern is the view of the less disadvantaged. Most societies, regardless of disadvantaged people to be those coming from minority groups like people of black color without considering the socioeconomic status of such people. In this case, the black doctor is more economically stable that Vietnamese, and therefore skin color or race should not be used in granting privileges. The second aspect is the qualification. Even though the son of a black doctor thrives from the minority population, he does not qualify when compared to the daughter of the Vietnamese boat refugee. The other aspect worth consideration is other socioeconomic factors that need to be considered. In this case, the daughter of a Vietnamese boat refugee needs to be considered based on gender equality and the disparity between males and females, especially concerning education. Strong affirmative action increases inequality levels where a certain proportion of the society unfairly benefits best on their socioeconomic factors while others equally lose.

Discrimination, either current or previous, contributes a moderately minor part in defining education and employment differences among different races and gender. Discrimination exposes flaws in the society and school settings. These result in low skills among underrepresented minorities, consequently leading to truncated representation and poor performance in high paying jobs and college places (Thermatron & Thernstrom, 2012). The fact that women remain to lag behind men in the labor markets cannot be attributed to their minority nature in society but personal choices made by women themselves (Furchtgott-Roth & Stolber, 2009). Hiring or admitting less qualified women is not a remedy in reducing discrimination. However, women need to be empowered to work hard and own such positions based on qualifications.

Affirmative action has led to hiring, promotion, and admission of less qualified individuals in the society who ends up performing poorly. Individuals who benefit from affirmative action end up being hurt as they find themselves in positions where they eventually fail. In school admissions, affirmative action students have been found to gravitate disproportionately towards the easy majors. The dropout rates among affirmative action students have also been higher than those admitted under normal programs (Niu & Tienda, 2017). Low performance and dropouts rates highlight preexisting prejudices about such students hence resulting in self-doubt among the students themselves. A study on the impacts of affirmative action on students’ performance revealed that more than 50% of the African American students admitted through affirmative action were in the bottom 10 percent of the class. In the data released on the academic performance of different students when deciding the Fisher case, the SAT scores for Asians students placed then in the 93rd percentile while those of African Americans were at the 52nd percentile. The results from this study communicated one major issue about school admissions: most students’ performance depends on their entry credentials.

Strong affirmative action policies present a sobering picture. Beneficiaries of affirmative action policies shy away from performing complex tasks at workplaces and taking subjects like science and engineering, which are graded on a tougher curve than other subjects. Therefore, the impetus of the policies harms the professional ambitions of people as they fear tough challenges. A research done by Cole and Barber confirmed that race-preferential admissions are among the major causes of low performance and attraction to prestigious careers among minority groups (Cole & Barber, 2015).

Affirmative action corrodes socioeconomic and political relationships between members of society. Since the policies create winners and losers, it cultivates resentment among people from different demographics, including whites, blacks, and women. In the USA, the whites and Asians have constantly complained of being denied jobs, promotion, or admission into their universities of choice. This has made them begin to resent groups they perceive to be the beneficiaries of such policies. The beneficiaries of affirmative action, who are majorly the black race in the USA, resent the assumption that they would not have gotten the chances of admission, employment, or promotion for their race or gender. When this scenario happens, many schools, workplaces, and other forms of social interactions intended to be integrated turn to be the basis of frustrations, suspicions, and resentments. While the underprivileged in the society benefits from affirmative action policies, there are proportions from such groups adversely impacted.

Affirmative action portrays a picture of historically victimized individuals needing recompense from those who had a hand in victimization (Bowen & Bok, 2012). It also implies that women and individuals from minority groups cannot achieve the desired success levels unless they are given special consideration from admission committees, employers, and the government. Suppose a worker is hired in a regulated firm based on an affirmative action policy. The employers and other employees might assume that the person was hired to comply with the regulation but not due to their ability. Even if the worker is hired and promoted based on his performance, he might find it hard to convince other employers that his skills qualify him for the job. In this case, the hardworking and qualified individuals from the minority groups are disadvantaged as they cannot be accorded similar status and respect to equally qualified individuals from majority groups.

Conclusion

Affirmative action has led to its proponents, changing its rationale in recent years. Instead of viewing affirmative action as a remedy for disadvantage, the issue has shifted preference to push for diversity. If diversity is to be considered as an ultimate aim of affirmative action, then partialities need to be given based on unusual characteristics such as family income, gender and job, and academic qualification but not race and ethnicity. The assumption that only minorities add up to the majority ideas and perspectives of the society is misleading and infers all minority individuals think in a specific way. The reality of strong affirmative action is that racism cannot be eliminated through affirmative action. Race conscious programs and initiatives increase racial sensitivity and may result in acrimony and tension instead of healing and reconciliation.

Affirmative action policies and initiatives also express different destructive messages in society. Messages of individual advancement and inequality encourage employment institutions and schools to consider race and gender in hiring and admission processes. In so doing, such institutions condone the ideas ought to condemn, which are the identification of people based on their demographic factors like race and ethnicity. While some institutions such as Texas University have their affirmative action policies, others are compelled by local, national, and international policies that regard affirmative action as a major factor in enhancing equality and inclusivity. Affirmative action is not only unfair to the majority population like the white males but also to the marginalized groups whom these policies are envisioned to help. Therefore, any policy that sets this kind of tone and results in such unwanted outcomes need to be rethought, regardless of how admirable its intent might be. Governments and institutions worldwide should stop seeking public and private remedies to challenges such as underrepresentation by considering race and gender inequality. Instead, they should strive to come up with cures that do not poison the socioeconomic and political relationship as affirmative action does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Bowen, W., & Bok, D. (2012). The Shape of the River:Long-term consequences of considering race in college and university admissions. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Cole, S., & Barber, E. (2015). Increasing Faculty Diversity. Harvard Business Review, 12-19.

Cornell Law School. (1989, January 23). City of Richmond,Appellant v.J.A Croson Company. Retrieved June 17, 2020, from Cornell Law School: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/488/469

Furchtgott-Roth, D., & Stolber, C. (2009). Women’s Figures:An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America. Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute.

Herrnstein, R., & Murray, C. (1994). The Bell Curve. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Niu, S., & Tienda, M. (2017). Minority student academic performance under the uniform admission law:Evidence from the University of Teaxas at Austin. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 20-34.

Sacks, D., & Thiel, P. (1996, October 12). The Case Against Affirmative Action. Retrieved June 17, 2020, from Stanfoed Magazine: https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-case-against-affirmative-action

Sowell, T. (2015). Affirmative Action Around the World:An Empirical Analysis. New York: Yale University Press.

Thernstrom, A., & Thernstrom, S. (2012). No Excuses:Closing the Racial Gap in Learning. New York: Simon and Shulster.