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¶ … Affirmative Action is No Longer Useful
Affirmative action once had a place in American society. It provided a jump-start of sorts to minorities and women in the work place who had no support infrastructure to speak of in place prior to its inception. But, now, after several decades of racial and gender quotas, American businesses and colleges are discovering that Affirmative Action is no longer serving the purpose it once was. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that affirmative action is an outmoded form of legalized discrimination and that it is harming the American workforce rather than helping it.
Proponents of affirmative action claim that it continues to be relevant because of the still-remaining undercurrent of racism and sexism at the core of corporate America. Their claim is that there are thousands of examples of people of color, white women, who had been as a group excluded from jobs and educational opportunities, or were denied similar opportunities once in the job, have gained access because of affirmative action, and they would be right. When these policies were supported by the executive branch and judicial support at a time when these groups of people were grossly underrepresented...
vast numbers of people of color, white women and men have gained access they would not otherwise have had. These gains have led to very real changes. But, we are finally experiencing the end of those gains. Affirmative action can be demonstrated to be an institutionalized, legislated form of discrimination against anyone or any group not specifically listed on the affirmative action roster.
Affirmative action has resulted in many universities complaining that they are forced into taking sub-par students from a specific racial group in order to meet percentage quotas while denying access to other highly qualified students from other races. On the front line of the anti-affirmative action front is the University system in California. Race-based affirmative action, often by means of an equally inflexible formula, is designed to offset the effects of test scores on black and Latino applicants who, on average, test lower than whites and Asians. (For two decades or more, until well into the 1990s, places like UC Berkeley, the University of Texas, and the University of Michigan added extra points to the scores of black and Latino applicants.) So as federal courts -- in Texas, Michigan, and Georgia --…
references in law school admissions, the other upholding them in undergraduate admissions (Schrag, 25).
Schools are not only having to actually use a racial bias when admitting students, they are having to accept students who otherwise would not be able to enter college not because of their race or gender, but because of their school performance - which is what has always formed the primary differentiating point between candidates for seats in schools (Dowling, 6). Affirmative action may have helped out a lot of people - it gave a very large number of people of color and women a leg-up, an artificial boost to help equalize their foundation so as to be able to encourage the achievement and hiring of others like them. But, in the name of affirmative action, schools and businesses are forced into making decisions that they shouldn't have to. The workplace is very diverse, the numbers of CEO's that are female and/or minority is rising (and CEO is not a listed position on affirmative action lists). The practice, simply put, is no longer necessary.
Works Referenced
Dowling, William C. "Enemies of Promise: Why America Needs the SAT." Academic Questions. Wntr, 2000. v13. i1. p6.
Schrag, Peter. "War on the SAT: with affirmative action rolled back, University of California President Richard Atkinson wants to ditch the controversial standardized test as the be-all, end-all of college admissions." May 6, 2002. v13. i8. p24(4).
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