A Discussion on the Problems of Affirmative Action

Former Senator Bob Dole once said of affirmative action, Our country is no longer the land of opportunity but a pie chart, where jobs and other benefits are often awarded not because of hard work or merit, but because of someones biology (www.washingtonpost.com). Why should we oppress a new generation, and risk planting the seed of racism, to correct the mistakes of our forefathers? There are many problems with affirmative action: including effectiveness, being misconceptions of its original intentions, and being the moral issues.

Statistics from the University of California Berkeley show that black dropout rates are more than 50% higher than whites or Asians dropout rates. (www.dpi.state.wi.us/dp/dltcl/badgerlink). Are we trying to encourage failure by placing many unqualified students where they cannot possibly succeed? The brilliant idea of affirmative action took place by giving minorities jobs over whites. However, there is an old adage that holds very true in the case of affirmative action. The phrase is two wrongs never make a right. Counteracting racial prejudice in the work place by simply reversing the roles never did and never will resolve the problem it simply changed the group of people that prejudice was aimed at from the minority to the majority.

The second problem with affirmative action is misconceptions of its original intentions. Affirmative action was first created in an effort to help minorities leap the discriminative barriers present when the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 first took action. However, since that time affirmative action has evolved into many different misconceptions among not only the people it was designed to open the doors for but also the school systems, employers and others who ended up implementing a quota system. The reason that affirmative action was started was that white people were getting opportunities that colored people werent based solely on white supremacy, belligerence, and skin color. What it all boils down to is reverse discrimination. Ending discrimination is an admirable dream, but it is quite another when employers, schools and others give preferences to people based on the color of their skin or past discrimination. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act Hubert Humphrey swore that he would eat the bill if it were ever used for any kind of discrimination (www.nonline.com).

The third and most important problem is the morality of affirmative action. Giving a job or other benefits based on someones ethnicity is not only unethical but racist. Imagine this, you are a black man fresh out of college, going for an interview for your dream job. You do not get the job. When ask your interviewer why you didnt get the job he tells you that the job you applied for was reserved for a white male. Anyone and they would say you were discriminated against. Now imagine that youre white. You could talk to most people in favor of affirmative action and they would say you did not deserve the job, because youve somehow oppressed blacks. equality is not a word reserved for blacks or women. It is a word that by its own axiomatic meaning must include everyone(www.sunone.com).

Affirmative action is nothing but reverse racism, and people are taught at a very young age that racism of any kind is wrong. There are many problems with affirmative action, such as: ineffectiveness, misconceptions about its original intention, and moral issues. In his I Have a Dream Speech, Martin Luther King Jr. said, I have a dream, that one day my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character (www.smartlink.net). It is a shame to disappoint him.

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