Whether or Not Quotas for Job Applicant Selection Are a Solution to Racial Inequality in the United States

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In this essay I will consider whether or not quotas for job applicant selection are a solution to racial inequality in the United States of America. In considering this subject I will rely on In Defense of Quotas by James Rachels who argues that the use of Quotas is justifiable in certain circumstances. First I will qualify my use of the word race and clarify what I mean when I reference racial equality. Then I will present an argument that quotas will not work as the sole solution to racial inequality. After this I will support a premise for my main argument which is that not all of the races are equivalently qualified for potentially equivalent jobs. After this I will consider a possible objection to my argument which is that quotas should be enacted even if candidates are not equivalently qualified for a job. Finally I will conclude that, although quotas for job applicant selection could work if minority groups had equivalent qualifications, if quotas alone were enacted, they would most likely fail in solving the monetary inequality between different racial groups. First of all, I must clarify that when I use the word race I intend to express the socially constructed idea that groups of people are categorized or can be rightfully by their appearance or ethnicity. Although I find the term significant only inasmuch as they are used in society, since the subject of this essay deals with the socially constructed idea of race, I too will fall into a language that I ultimately consider somewhat misleading. For this paper I will consider racial inequality the quantifiable difference between groups when groups of people are categorized by their appearance or ethnicity. Given that the United States of America has predominately Capital... ... middle of paper ... ...n supported my premises, specifically the idea that not all of the races are equivalently qualified for potentially equivalent jobs if considering college is considered a major qualification. After this I answered the possible objection that such quotas should be put in play anyways which would seem to have a limited success to say the least. Therefore, it seems that as Rachels presents them, if quotas for employee selection alone were enacted, then they would most likely fail in solving the monetary inequality between different racial groups. Although I must admit that Rachels did not claim that quotas act as an absolute solution to inequality in the United States, it seems that considering quotas as a solution to social inequality while neglecting the fact that groups of people categorized by race are not equally qualified is not a solution to racial inequality.

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