Affirmative Action

Introduction

Affirmative Action began in 1965 when President Johnson signed the Executive Order 11246 in to law. The Executive Order prevents federal contractors from discriminating against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The phrase “affirmative action” was first coined, when federal contractors were required to take affirmative action to ensure that applicants were not discriminated against in anyway. When affirmative action was created, it only included minorities. In 1967, Johnson decided to expand the program to include women because women were discriminated against much like minorities. In the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, affirmative action was a method used to stop discrimination, however in today’s world it has become reverse discrimination in many cases. Everyone has the opportunity to contribute to society. The color of one’s skin does not determine how capable he or she is at achieving greatness. This paper will analyze Affirmative Action and determine its appropriateness in today’s society.

Literature Review

As stated above, affirmative action promotes reverse discrimination. Basically reverse discrimination is the condition under which there is preferential treatment of one group (minorities and women) over another group, rather than equal opportunity. Giving the job positions to less qualified candidates is favoritism; this harms those who should be obtaining the job position. A dedicated person who worked hard his or her whole life could lose a position to a minority that slipped into the position undeservingly. The whole purpose of affirmative action was to eliminate favoritism; instead it shifts favoritism to the other side. Favoritism of this sort does nothing but imply that minorities need special treatment to succeed in life. Highly merited minorities (past professors) have told me personally that minorities do not need special treatment; they need equal treatment. They (past professors) told me that affirmative action implies that all minorities are inferior to whites and that minorities need to be treated with special care just to have a chance to become successful. The affirmative action program also undermines their (past professors) achievements of minorities by implying that their positions were handed to them rather than being earned. It seems that they also disagree with affirmative action in today’s world.

Affirmative action in collegiate admissions has proven to be one of the most controversial issues of the era. In this area both minorities and non-minorities are discriminated against, when affirmative action was in use the admissions board was divided into two groups one for minorities and another for non-minorities, standards for both groups were different. Once again affirmative action is showing favoritism. A recent example of affirmative action in collegiate admissions includes Gratz and Hamacher vs. University of Michigan. Gratz and Hamacher alleged that unlawful preference to minorities in University of Michigan undergraduate admissions. This also reminds me of when I was a senior in high school, several black colleges wanted me to come to there school to play football on a scholarship. What they did not tell me was that I would receive a minority scholarship not a football scholarship. Basically they found a loophole; they could recruit white players and give them minority scholarships and still have the same number of football scholarships to give out. They were getting a two for one deal by improving their number of minority (white students) students and getting