Affirmative Action was originally put in place to right the wrongs done by society against minorities, specifically blacks. It was meant to give them a step up so that we could be on the same playing field. Affirmative action was needed in the past but as society has learned from its mistakes and has made many steps to end the racial discrimination in schooling and the work place, it is no longer needed. Now instead of making the playing field fair for blacks it has turned into reverse racism against whites. By being a minority you have a better chance of being accepted into major universities than your fellow white students. It gives the wrong message to minorities saying that without help they can’t compete with white kids.
Affirmative Action was implemented in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with a sole purpose “to redress imbalances of minorities and women in the workforce.” The many years of racism including the Jim Crow laws made minorities, mainly blacks, feel like outcasts. They were forced to ride in the back of public busses, drink out of “black only” drinking fountains, and weren’t allowed to go into many “white only” restaurants. They were not given a fair chance with job applications and were declined acceptance into many colleges and universities.
Affirmative Action was created for multiple reasons; the main one was to reverse the years of discrimination that hindered the advancement of America’s minorities, especially in education. Because of Affirmative Action universities are required to give several of their admittance class slots for the students who are classified as minorities. Not necessarily based on their test scores more than the fact that they weren’t white.
The statistics on Affirmative Action show that it is no longer needed, and in fact it is forcing schools and businesses towards racism, choosing minorities over more qualified candidates so that they meet local and federal regulations. Because of a law suit against the University of Michigan it was forced to make public the fact that a black student is 258 times more likely to be accepted to its law school than a white student. Martin Luther King Jr. once stated “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”. Are we fulfilling his dream at all costs, or do we do everything we can to oppose it? Are the actions of the University of Michigan fair? Are they concurrent with Dr. King’s wishes? Are they an appropriate way to make the college acceptance process fair for all races? I have always thought that schools accept people on their credentials and test scores; why should the color of my skin give me a better or worse chance of getting in? There was a day when blacks needed a hand up in society because of the severe racism that was against them, in some small areas of society it still exists. By in large discrimination on race is over.
A recurring fact is that the number of black students who are accepted for collegiate admissions based on qualifications (i.e. test scores, G.P.A. average, etc.) is very low compared to those who are admitted on the minority factor. For example “In 1991 in terms of all of the students who were admitted to selective law schools there were 421 black ones, 24 were admitted according to what the qualifications were considered to be appropriate for white and Asian students. All the rest of them just based on the numbers wouldn’t have gotten in”.
The United States was founded on certain basic freedoms: freedom of speech, religion, press, equal opportunity. Every American has the freedom of opportunity but not the freedom of outcome. We all have the privilege to apply to a university or a job. What we don’t and can’t have is the right to be accepted or hired, that lies in the hands of the University President or the boss over whose company we applied for employment. In a recent Supreme Court case Ricci v. DeStefano in which the ruling of a 5 to 4 decision in “concluding that the city of New Haven, Conn., violated the rights of white firefighters when it threw out a promotions test because no blacks had passed [qualified for the promotion] it.” President Obama said after hearing the Supreme Court’s ruling on the case that “any hiring or school admissions practices based solely on race are unconstitutional, and he condemned the use of quotas.”
Joseph Phillips, an actor and member of the black community is against the use of Affirmative Action because it sends the wrong message his children stated, “The idea that, that these [black] children are in need of preferences because they don’t have access to the same benefits [as] their white counterparts, is just ridiculous… Because we’re not talking about individuals suddenly, we’re talking about people, generally, in term of their race… The underlying message is that our [black] kids can't compete, that my three sons cannot compete. And I don’t buy it”. Affirmative Action helped the minorities when it was first implemented but now it just raises them in an environment where the government has to help them because Affirmative Action gives the impression that they are not good enough or smart enough to compete with the white kids. They grow up their whole life thinking that I have to beat the white kids; I need help to get into college, or to get a job. It’s not true, nowadays in America everyone is given the same opportunity to succeed. We are not guaranteed the same results but the same opportunity.
When the standard is lowered more people get it, but not necessarily those who you want in. As the Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration for extending Affirmative Action into the housing sector; “economists were screaming from the rooftops that the Democrats were forcing mortgage lenders to issue loans that would fail the moment the housing market slowed and deadbeat borrowers couldn't get out of their loans by selling their houses. A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted, food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed. Democrats set an affirmative action time-bomb and now it's gone off”.
When minority students are accepted into universities without meeting the same academic qualifications as their white students do, they are almost guaranteed failure. If they can’t meet the minimum standards to be accepted why would we think they would be able to compete with the students who did qualify? If they do make it through law or medical programs would they be properly educated to practice law or medicine? Professor Gail Heriot, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights commissioner and member of the University of San Diego law faculty stated
“…at elite law schools 52 percent of black students had first-year grades that put them in the bottom 10 percent of their class as opposed to 7 percent white students. Black students had a higher failing and dropout rate, 19 percent compared to 8 percent for white students. Only 45 percent of blacks passed the bar exam on their first try compared with 78 percent of whites. Even after multiple attempts, only 57 percent of blacks succeeded in passing the bar. Professor Heriot points out that this tragedy is reversed when black and white law students with similar academic credentials compete against each other at the same school. They earn about the same grades. When these students with the same grades from the same-tier school took the bar examination, they passed at the same rate”.
Some would say that Affirmative Action is necessary to make up for all of the past wrongs that White America has committed against the black slaves of the early 1800s and other minorities. In order to make up for all of the horrible things that have been done towards blacks hundreds of years ago, we would have to make it unfair for white people now, who had nothing to do with slavery. We would either have to make it unfair for whites or make it erroneously fair for blacks to get a free leg up on everyone else. Both of which I fail to see how we would be able to change the past. As stated earlier Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream was to judge everyone on what they do and how they act not on the color of their skin. The solution to the problem for some people is to punish the white people of today (who had nothing to do with slavery) and give free handouts to the blacks (who were never enslaved). This of course still doesn’t change history and would only try to arbitrarily fix a past wrong by committing another wrong today. Two wrongs can never make a right.
Others would argue even those black or minority students who can succeed never get the opportunity to show their intelligence because they never get accepted into school, or never get the job they applied for. Not only does everyone get an equal change at acceptance into colleges and universities but minorities get an above normal opportunity to be accepted. The University of Stanford stated in an issue of their magazine they have been discriminating in favor of minorities in numerous fields for numerous years. They mention how recently they have rethought their approach towards Affirmative Action. Originally thought, Affirmative Action was a means to redress discrimination, instead it has promoted it.
And of course there is the argument that minorities who benefit from Affirmative Action only receive a small “leg up” on their fellow students. When you look at the facts you will see a 171 point difference between blacks and whites at Stanford’s SAT scores. I firmly believe that keeping Affirmative Action does more harm than good. 171 points is a lot, it could have catastrophic effects on all of us years later for letting someone who scored later into the university. The requirements for Law or Medical schools is very hard to achieve. They make it that way for a reason. Doing brain surgery is a very difficult and a dangerous procedure, the medical school is not being racist as much as it is careful on who they let in. They are thinking of the future welfare of these student patients. We all shriek when we think of medicine in South America, if we continue Affirmative Action in America we may be moving closer to their level of health care then we would like to.
Society has come to the conclusion that in order to make up for all of the wrongs done to the minorities in the past; we have to give them an unfair advantage in the present. The problem in this is that history cannot be re-written, we cannot change the past. What has been done has been done. All we can do is improve the future. The best way to ensure equality for all is to judge an applicant whether it be for school or a job, on their character, test scores, and past performances. Martin Luther King Jr. fought so hard against racial discrimination not that blacks could have an advantage over whites. What he wanted is all people black, white, Mexican, Asian to all be judged on the same criteria, to be given the same opportunity.
“Equality of rights does not mean equality of results. I can have all the equal treatment in the world on a golf course and I will not finish within shouting distance of Tiger Woods”. In the case of the firefighters in New Haven Connecticut, is it strange that only one minority was able to qualify for the advancement? Was that reason enough to throw out all of the other people who did pass it? “New Haven officials said they found themselves in a difficult position when the test results showed that no African Americans and only two Hispanics would have been eligible for promotion to the ranks of lieutenant and captain. City officials said they feared a lawsuit (Barnes, Robert).” I also find it strange that a very large percentage of the professional athletes aren’t white but are black. Does it cause me to think that professional athletics are racist, or bias towards minorities?
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