Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action

The driving force behind affirmative action was set about from past and present experiences of discrimination that has had an unfair course to many minorities throughout the ages of American history. Most critiques of affirmative action believe that different races outside of the white race and women are placed in a position that he or she has not earned and is not ready for. To encourage private and public institutions including, but not limited to higher education facilities, medical hospitals, and law enforcement to be a better liaison of the minority society. To accomplish this a course of action will have to be put into place by targeting recruitment programs geared towards minorities from non-social, and political groups who are at a disadvantage. In what follows I will briefly give an overview of what affirmative action stands for, give many justifications for affirmative action, and why it should be in place.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy first published December 28, 2001, revised 2005 states that “Affirmative action means positive steps taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded. When those steps involve preferential selection—selection on the basis of race, gender, or ethnicity—affirmative action generates intense controversy.” (Fullinwider, 2005).

“Liberals of affirmative action say that using it to remove discrimination is counter-productive, both because it requires the very discrimination it is seeking to eliminate in order to work and because it promotes prejudice by increasing resentment of those who are the beneficiaries of affirmative action from those who have been adversely affected by the policy.” (Wikipedia, 2008 2). Many businesses, schools, and law enforcements agency complain that the funding for affirmative action is not forthcoming, since the educational and economic advantages may not coexist, or hold itself to any particular gender status, ethnic group, or racial background. Using this as a disadvantage is not appropriate.

Having an affirmative action plan in the business world, schools and law enforcement must be examined closely the rhetoric of those who speak against affirmative action and contrast it with reality. American’s in the workplace has not found a common ground for an Affirmative Action plan, in its place is a shallow difference that has yet to be solved. A business does not put the minority as an individual, but place minorities in a group based on race, gender, or sexual orientation. Women as a minority should not have to go through the advancement stage just because they are female, it should be solely based on performance, or who is the better man or women for the job. A person gender should not dictate merit increases or advancement; this should never be a qualifying factor for it leads to sexual harassment. The most important reason affirmative action still sees a presence of prejudice is the fact that if a beautiful women is placed in a position, one will wonder did her looks get her there or her performance as an excellent worker. Therefore, the women will be looked down on as being easy. On the other hand, did she get this because of the affirmative action plan that is in place? One will have to wonder.

The affirmative action plan also have people questioning if a docter who is a minority gets accepted to ivy league medical university was it because it was earned from there achievements or was the university trying to make there quota ratio for the affirmative action plan? Corbie- Smith (1999) found the following:

“Of the responding physicians, 62% of blacks reported having experienced ethnic harassment, twice the rate of Asians and "others," three times that of Hispanics, and 10 times that of whites. 25 percent of black physicians reported experiencing harassment in at least three phases of their careers (before medical school, during medical school, during training, in practice), compared with 6% of "others," 2% of Hispanics and Asians, and less than 0.5% of whites. U.S.-born and foreign-born doctors reported similar rates of harassment before and during medical school, while foreign-born doctors reported significantly more harassment during training and practice. Reports of harassment during medical school were higher for blacks under 50 than for those over 50 (38% vs. 10%, p = .0101). In white physicians, harassment was significantly associated with religion. Ethnic groups,