Analysis Post

Affirmative action has been a part of America’s history for 48 years.  Affirmative action was introduced in 1961 by President Kennedy.  The term “affirmative action” means measures taken to increase opportunities for women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded.  President Lyndon Johnson issued the Executive Order 11246, which allowed affirmative action to hire without consideration to race, religion, and national origin.  Different forms of affirmative action range from rigid quotas to target outreach that encourage minorities to apply.  The different programs decide how much weight they give race in determining an application for the college admission.   The same forms can also be used in the workplace.   Affirmative action is needed to allow for minorities to have fair job opportunities in the workplace.

The issue of affirmative action and its interpretation often leads to the question should affirmative action policies be eliminated because the policy is based on race.  There are both positive and negatives to this question, which represent the various arguments.  The main negative argument is affirmative action encourages reverse discrimination.  Reverse discrimination is discrimination in hiring, college admissions, employment, etc are directed toward the majority population such as white males.  Allan Bakke was a white male, who had been rejected from a medical two years in a row, but the same school had selected less qualified minorities, and the school reserved 16 out of 100 spots for minorities.  Bakke sued the University of California, and the court ruled that Bakke was discriminated against, but refused him entrance into the medical school.   The case was taken to the Supreme Court where it confirmed with the trial court’s decision that the admissions process was unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court ordered Bakke be admitted into the school.  This case was significant because it was the first time the Supreme Court said there could be reverse discrimination.  Other negative arguments are students who are admitted based on affirmative action are not prepared to handle the university they have been accepted to, employment is based on race or gender rather than merit, and creates an attitude of “us versus them”.   Supporters of affirmative action say it is needed to make sure minorities and women have a fair opportunity in education and employment.  Statistics have shown that schools that serve majority of minority inner-city children receive about half of the money per student than schools that are located in the suburbs.  White men hold 97% of the top executive positions, and the black male worker makes sufficiently lower wages than a white male worker.  Affirmative action allows for minorities to the same opportunities as the qualified majority party.

The two areas that affirmative action affects the most people and causes the most controversy are college admissions and the workplace.   In college admissions affirmative action  helps individuals from diverse backgrounds have an opportunity to have an education at a university that has historically accepted students with certain backgrounds and income bracket.   Many students with high socio-economic classes generally have an advantage when applying to college, especially Ivy League schools.  Affirmative action is a policy that compensates for the inequalities between socio-economic classes.  It also allows for more diversity in schools.  Affirmative action  has allowed for many minorities and women to move up and have high positions in the workplace.  The positive effect of diversity in the workplace is the understanding of cultures of your peers.  Businesses (9) also use diversity management, which is a plan that develops affirmative action programs that provide support for minority members in the workplace.

The affirmative action debate is the difference between color-blind versus race-conscious.  The color-blind approach is the more supported approach.  Color-blind is how employers and college admissions advertise in media mostly seen by minorities to recruit them for colleges and employment.  Many supporters of this approach are interested in creating fair education and employment for minorities, and they accept the inequalities in achievement.  The race-conscious approach encourages minorities to be considered in admissions and hiring to reach a numerical goal or quota.  Race-conscious is also called preferential treatment or affirmative discrimination.  These two approaches have answers to the basic questions about social justice and human rights, and an employer or college admissions must have a full understanding of these questions so he or she can facilitate affirmative action.

Republicans and Democrats normally an opposite on every issue and affirmative action is no different.  Republicans view affirmative action as unnecessary and unfair.  They argue that two students with equal academic success will not have the same admissions opportunity, and the minority race of the student could be the factor that gives that person the spot in the class.   Because affirmative action uses race as factor to be considered in college admissions and employment, Republicans feel it insults all the hardworking students and employees, despite race or economic background.  The University of Michigan’s admission process was challenged by Republicans as being unfair because more points were given to race, than a perfect SAT score.  President Bush called the admission process “fundamentally flawed and it is a quota system that rejects or accepts students based solely on race.”    An example Republicans use is a son of a  black millionaire would get preference over a son of a white unemployed high school dropout under the admissions process.  However, Democrats view affirmative action as very necessary and fair.  Because minorities have historically been discriminated against, affirmative action guarantees to restrict discrimination in the future against minorities, which Democrats view as very important.  In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 the University of Michigan’s  admissions policies to consider race to achieve a diverse student body was constitutional.  This ruling was significant because it was the first approved method to pursue diversity in colleges and it provided a map for other colleges to diverse their school.  Even though affirmative action is a large issue Democrats and Republicans disagree upon, it normally is flown below the radar.  When the Supreme Court decided in the University of Michigan, many people knew nothing about the case.   The issue of affirmative action had much greater attention from Democrats than from Republicans and other minority political parties.

After researching affirmative action and how it affects the opportunities for minorities in college admissions and the workplace, it is necessary to provide the same job opportunities for minorities in the workplace.  Affirmative action gives minorities who would not normally have a chance to go to college of their choice, including Ivy League schools.  As stated earlier, minority students who attends a majority minority inner-city school is at a disadvantage than a students who attends a schools in the suburbs.  Affirmative action allows for those the students who go to the inner-city schools to compete with the students who attend the schools in the suburbs.  With more minorities in college, there will be more minorities in the workplace.  Colin Powel said, “ I believe race should be a factor among many other factor in determining the makeup of a student body of a university”, which shows that minority leaders are in favor of affirmative action.  When it comes to the workplace, affirmative action allows for minorities the same job opportunity as the majority race.  Without affirmative action, some of our important minority leaders such as President Obama may not have happened.