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Affirmative Action is a temporary solution to the problem of discrimination. Women and people of color have been systematically excluded from positions of power, their candidacy in education and the workplace undervalued. Because prejudices are often deeply rooted and subconsciously acted on, affirmative action is often necessary as a remedial solution.
However, affirmative action is not an ideal practice. Its use has led to accusations of "reverse racism." Affirmative action seems to mean that an individual gains entry to an academic institution or place of employment because of ethnicity, which would indeed wrong in principle. In practice, affirmative action almost never means that gender or ethnicity ensures success. Opponents of affirmative action also claim that less qualified individuals are given preference over more qualified individuals because of gender or racial background. In fact, most institutions practice a type of affirmative action that guarantees that all successful applicants are equally qualified even when preference is later offered to minorities. Affirmative action also does not necessarily mean that a quota system is used. The main drawback with affirmative action is that it can be divisive: it may lead to resentment among traditionally successful groups of people. Affirmative action is also meant to be a temporary remedy, but knowing when and how to eliminate affirmative action programs will be difficult.
Proponents of affirmative action argue that the practice is an effective way of eliminating bias in the admissions process and of ensuring that more minorities and females are granted opportunities for upward social mobility and for holding positions of power. Without a doubt minorities and women have been passed over due to overt or unconscious biases. A disproportionate number of white males hold positions of power in many institutions. Furthermore, diversity is necessary to bolster the democratic process in a country as heterogeneous as the United States. Affirmative action may be the only method to create diverse populations in all social, political, and educational institutions and places of business. Until discrimination has been wholly removed from the public consciousness, affirmative action is necessary and should be used to ensure greater diversity in all public and private institutions.
Affirmative action is an initiative based on a set of policies that are intended to eradicate both present and past prejudice against women and minority in areas of employment and businesses where they were historically marginalized. Theses discriminations can also be based on ones race, religion, color or nation of origin (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2009). Brief History of affirmative action Civil rights movements originally endorsed programs that would enable African-Americans acquire
Many federal courts have held that community law enforcement agencies may adhere to the stipulations of the Equal Protection Clause if an organizational need validates the employer's intentional affirmative action labors. In the arena of higher education, the Supreme Court has held in Grutter v. Bollinger that having an assorted student body can often account for the consideration of race as an issue in precise admissions results at colleges
Perhaps it's time that politics follows suit. Without denying that we are indeed diverse, it is necessary to recognize that we are all human beings. Diversity makes us human, but discrimination violates the potential bonds of friendship within the societies in the United States. Politicians and federal officials might do well to revisit the meaning of the constitution and of the very name of the country: we are United, diverse,
Affirmative Action is the set of public policies and initiatives designed to help eliminate past and present discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Affirmative action was set into place during the 1960's. Focusing in particular on education and jobs, affirmative action policies required that active measures be taken to ensure that blacks and other minorities enjoyed the same opportunities for promotions, salary increases, career advancement, school
If affirmative action is permissible by law and sustainable by the Constitution, then it makes sense that universities would be allowed to continue their legacy admissions. The morality and ethics of legacy admissions is a different thing altogether. Affirmative action remains necessary in a nation that only abolished Jim Crow laws five decades ago and which still suffers from one of the largest income disparities of any developed country. On
With this ruling the Court upheld legality of affirmative action. In considering the reasoning behind the Court's upholding of the highly debated principle, the rationale was that to remedy past discrimination, a program that is race-based must be put into effect. Clearly, the Court was concerned with becoming intertwined in the daily administration of academic programs, and the same would have likely held true for the workplace. The Bakke case had