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The importance of affirmative action
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Affirmative action is the process of improving employment, hiring, and admission practices for groups previously discriminated against. Executive Order 10925 issued by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 created the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and introduced affirmative action to the country. Affirmative action is a way of compensating for the previous 345 years of slavery and legalized discrimination. Higher education has been utilizing affirmative action in their admission processes since the 1960’s. (Stewart)
Despite promoting equality, affirmative action is a problem. It uses race, gender or ethnicity as a determinate for acceptance or denial. This creates a system of discrimination against certain demographic groups. Applicants are facing unequal standards due to their demographic. Affirmative action is degrading the educational system. Although affirmative action was established to compensate for previous discrimination, the fact is affirmative action should not be practiced because it does not promote equal treatment for all people.
Affirmative action has improved the overall life of numerous people. Many minorities, specifically African-Americans, have improved due to educational opportunities acquired via affirmative action. Enrollment of black students skyrocketed because of affirmative action. Blacks had accounted for less than one percent of students entering into universities in 1951. Affirmative action, starting in the 1960’s allowed for blacks to make up 6.3% of Ivy Leagues by 1978, and approximately eight percent of law and medical schools by 1995. The same schools that were less than one percent black in 1951 now had a population consisting of 7.1% black students in 1989. A study d...
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...esh. Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus. New York: Free Press, 1998.
“Gratz v. Bollinger.” The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. 02 January 2014. .
Johnson, John W. "Affirmative Action: Illiberal Education (1991): The Cost of Affirmative Action. “Issues: Understanding Controversy and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 2 Jan. 2014.
Johnson, John W. "Affirmative Action: The Shape of the River (1998): The Gains of Affirmative Action." Issues: Understanding Controversy and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 2 Jan. 2014.
Stewart, Chuck. "Affirmative Action: Overview." Issues: Understanding Controversy and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 2 Jan. 2014.
“Sweatt v. Painter.” The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. 13 December 2013. .
Honig v. Doe, 484 U.S. 305, 108 S. Ct. 592, 98 L. Ed. 2d 686 (1988).
"Schenck v. United States. Baer v. Same.." LII. Cornell University Law school, n.d. Web. 6 Jan. 2014. .
Washington Law Review, Vol. 86, Issue 4 (December 2011), pp. 841-874 Barnum, Jeffrey C. 86 Wash. L. Rev. 841 (2011)
Discrimination is still a chronic global issue, and drastic inequalities still exist at the present time. Thus, the Affirmative Action Law is an important tool to many minorities most especially to women, and people of color, for the reason that this program provides an equality on educational, and professional opportunities for every qualified individual living in the United States. Without this program, a higher education would have been impossible for a “minority students” to attain. Additionally, without the Affirmative Action, a fair opportunity to have a higher-level career...
...Streeter 275. Courtesy of the Tarlton Law Library, Jamail Center for Legal Research, The University of Texas at Austin, 2013. Web. 3 February 2014.
Through a debate with Christopher A. Darden, an Associate Professor of Law at Southwestern School of Law in Los Angeles and Byron Warnken, a Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law, they ex...
SHELLEY v. KRAEMER. The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. 23 March 2014. .
Affirmative action has been a controversial topic ever since it was established in the 1960s to right past wrongs against minority groups, such as African Americans, Hispanics, and women. The goal of affirmative action is to integrate minorities into public institutions, like universities, who have historically been discriminated against in such environments. Proponents claim that it is necessary in order to give minorities representation in these institutions, while opponents say that it is reverse discrimination. Newsweek has a story on this same debate which has hit the nation spotlight once more with a case being brought against the University of Michigan by some white students who claimed that the University’s admissions policies accepted minority students over them, even though they had better grades than the minority students. William Symonds of Business Week, however, thinks that it does not really matter. He claims that minority status is more or less irrelevant in college admissions and that class is the determining factor.
Oct 1993. Retrieved November 18, 2010. Vol. 79. 134 pages (Document ID: 0747-0088) Published by American Bar Association
Pojman, Louis P. "The Case Against Affirmative Action." Csus.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
The roots of affirmative action may be traced back to the early 1960’s, during the Civil Rights Movement. It was in 1961 that President John F. Kennedy issued an Executive Order that first introduced affirmative action. This order included an establishment that government contractors “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated fairly during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” (University of California Irvine) Over the years, there have been many adjustments to affirmative action, but they all reiterated the same general idea. This idea is that there would be equal opportunity for all qualified persons, and to take positive actions in order to ensure there would be equal opportunity for all. (University of California Irvine) Affirmative action has been successful, it has increased the number of recruiting and screening practices by employers, raised employers’ inclination to hire denounced applicants, increased the number of minority or female applicants and employees, and it increased the likelihood that employers will provide training and evaluate the...
Payne, Angela R., and Bharat S. Thakkar. "The Hypocrisy Of Affirmative Action: Race And The Labor Market." International Journal Of Innovations In Business 1.4 (2012): 274-292. Business Source Premier. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
GANNETT CO. v. DEPASQUALE. (n.d.).The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. Retrieved April 7, 2014, from http://www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1978/1978_77_1301
Gose, Ben, and Schmidt, Peter. “Ruling Against Affirmative Action Could Alter Legal Debate and Admissions Practices.” Chronicle of Higher Education. (2001): 36.
The discrimination against Caucasian and Asian American students a long with the toleration of lower quality work produced by African American students and other minority students is an example of the problems caused by Affirmative Action. Although affirmative action intends to do good, lowering the standards by which certain racial groups are admitted to college is not the way to solve the problem of diversity in America's universities. The condition of America's public schools is directly responsible for the poor academic achievement of minority children. Instead of addressing educational discrepancies caused by poverty and discrimination, we are merely covering them up and pretending they do not exist, and allowing ourselves to avoid what it takes to make a d... ... middle of paper ... ...