Affirmative Action Term paper

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equal opportunity vs. legal discrimination

Race and ethnicity both have been at the eye of America's ethical hurricane over equality before the law. Equality is at the core of the United States, both culturally and legally. At the current situation, discrimination is inarguably unlawful and unfair. Legislation decided that if it not remedied voluntarily, it would be remedied by court order. And so, affirmative action took its place in workplaces and admissions offices across the United States.

Affirmative action was a well-intentioned government program that has skewed off its intended course of action. In the 1960s and 1970s, it won popular support as a way of setting lingering injustice straight, especially in education and employment, of the black community. It accomplished its goal for a time but was distorted by bureaucratic regulations, court rulings, and a sea of unnamable cultures and races. Affirmative action became a system of anti-white preferences, double standards, and quotas that are now widely in dispute by much of America.

There is much controversy around affirmative action as a panacea for past discrimination and favoritism. According to the Constitution and specific laws created by the legislature, distinctions based on race are illegal, whether such distinctions are oppressive as in the case of traditional discrimination or compassionate as in the case of affirmative action. Nevertheless, affirmative action is in direct violation of both the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Supreme Court and other courts have dramatically narrowed the scope of affirmative action, and polls indicate that even a majority of blacks dislike the fact that it is being used to help less qualified people get jobs, promotions, and admission to college. Voters in Washington State and California have approved propositions severely limiting affirmative action, and a similar measure in Florida has strong backing.

The trouble began in 1970 when opportunity and colorblindness, grand ideals, were supplanted by doctrines of diversity. The Supreme Court in 1971 ruled that employers could be prosecuted if the racial composition of the work force did not reflect the composition of the community. Proportional representation rather than social justice became the watchword. The multicultural ethos, promoted on campuses, replaced the spirit of one nation. Identity politics-what Frederick Lynch calls "the diversity machine"-took over, so preference was extended to individuals who had never personally experienced discrimination, and to groups-Hispanics and Asians-who were not here in substantial numbers when discrimination was most virulent. The diversity machine became an engine to punish white males, unless they had a Spanish...

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