Affirmative Action 2 Essay

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In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson used the term affirmative action to inform federal contractors to treat job-applicants and employees without regards to their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin (Lyndon B. Johnson). In the preceding year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed simply to make laws color-blind . However, such movement went further than merely giving equal opportunities to everyone, it progressed into the real meaning of affirmative action, which is measures taken by the United States to give opportunities to minorities by favors such as hiring and promotion, college admission, and the awarding of government contracts. Such policies did not express the true meaning of equal opportunities, which was introduced in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but rather took its own steps into a form of discrimination. Equal opportunities means that it should not be given with regards to the race, color, religion, gender, and national origin of the recipients but should be based solely on the merit of the individual. Instead of practicing affirmative action, which produces an effect of discrimination, reverse discrimination, and the inability of competition, the society should help the minorities to become more qualified and, the unqualified shouldn t be given the chance unless the opportunity requires the employment of a specific minority.

Affirmative action was originally designed to help minorities to get a better chance to compete with everyone, but it has gone too far and produced a sense of discrimination. Since all types of discrimination, which is the act of making distinctions on the basis of class or category without regard to individual merit, is outlawed in the United States, there can be no prejudice involved in making public decisions. Therefore, by saying you are hired because you re black is relevant to saying, you are fired because you re black , but in a more positive manner. Racial-preference is felt by many of the minorities as an act of prejudice and one even said, I wouldn t accept a job or college admission based on color. I would not want the stigma, the cloud hanging over me. There could be no greater insult (Ward Connerly). On the other hand, those who don t belong to the minority groups were being reverse-discriminated. Over the decade since affirmative action has been enacted, the non-minorities are losing out on positions such as jobs and college admissions, which are strictly reserved for the minorities, even though they have higher academic achievements as the minorities. One event of reverse discrimination occurred with Jerry and Ellen Cook, whose son had been rejected by the medical school in San Diego despite the grades so good that he got into Harvard (Terry, RPO). After it was proven that whites were being passed over for admission in favor of blacks and Latinos with lesser academic records and test scores (Terry, RPO) by simple college admission statistics, an anti-affirmative action activist has said that It was preference, pure and simple (Ward Connerly). Once again, affirmative action has been proven as discrimination and everybody should only be judge by his or her academic abilities. However, those who has less qualification should have assistance to make them more qualified.

You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, you are free to compete with all the others and still justly believe that you have been completely fair ...

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