Fight Against Affirmative Action: Pros and Cons

The controversy surrounding affirmative action’s effectiveness is often based on the idea of class inequality. However, Affirmative Action regulation forbids employers to discriminate against individuals because of their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in decisions regarding hiring, firing, compensation or other forms of employment. Though set up to protect minorities, Affirmative Action has failed to do its job correctly and is failing hard working American’s of all origin, regardless of color, race, religion, creed.

Under title VII of the Civil Rights Act, you can not base a hiring decision, in whole or in part, on a person’s race or gender. We have contradicting laws that are made to abolish bias and yet set firm to create them. 9 states have already banned Affirmation Action due to the inequality in which it causes in the work place. California (1996), Texas (1996), Washington (1998), Florida (1999), Michigan (2006), Nebraska (2008) Arizona (2010), New Hampshire (2012) and Oklahoma (2012). People are beginning to realize that besides the pros there many cons of affirmative action. Examples of this would be It promotes decimation in reverse, it still reinforces stereotypes, diversity can be just as bad as it can be good, it changes accountability standards, it lessens the achievement that minority groups obtain, and its personal bias will always exit.

For the argument of being against affirmation action, let’s first look at racial affirmative action. We see that the program itself actually profits the middle and upper-class Hispanic American and the middle and upper-class African Americans at the expense of lower economical class of Asian Americans as well as the European Americans. This dispute supports the idea of exclusively class-based affirmative action, meaning that America’s poor or monetarily disadvantaged is excessively made up of people of color, so class-based affirmative action would unduly help people of color. This would eradicate the need for race-based affirmative action as well as reducing any lop-sided benefits for middle and upper-class people of color.

May 19, 1986 Wygant V. Jackson Board of Education: This case challenged a school boar’s policy of protecting minority employees by laying off non-minority teachers first, even though the non-minority employees had seniority. The Supreme Court ruled against the school board, maintaining that they injury suffered by non-minorities affected could not justify the benefits to minorities: “We have previously expressed concern over the burden that a preferential-layoffs scheme imposes on innocent parties. In cases involving valid hiring goals, the burden to be borne by innocent individuals is diffused to a considerable extent among society generally. Though hiring goals may burden some innocent individual, they simply do not impose the same kind of injury that layoffs impose. Denial of a future employment opportunity is not as intrusive as loss of an existing job” (Santini, 2019).

So in this case the supreme court ruled that you can not lay off those who are not a minority just because they do not fall in that color, race, gender category, but they stand saying that “denial of a future employment opportunity is not as intrusive as loss of an existing job,” how can it be that they can predict the future or declare that a person of non-minority should not be awarded a job whom also maybe struggling regardless of their race, or gender, but maybe they too live economically lower class. Then should all lower-class citizens be lumped into the category of special privileges regardless of their race, color, gender, religion. How can we draw lines when the lines in the sand are easily whipped away by the waves of poverty that effects all members of society regardless of orientation or skin color? Affirmative action sees only color and gender and not the equality of equal opportunity through hard work, and determination. It sees only the less fortunate who may not be willing to work harder for something because they believe they have a birth right to deserve it. This is an issue for any person of color, or race, or gender, not for just non-minorities and minorities. It is an issue for all the people of society, do we want a government that wants us to be down so we have to rely on them to lift us up, or do we want a government that gives us the rights to have our actual freedom so that we can rise up like a phoenix among the ashes of our fight and deliver ourselves into success and prosperity?

Other challengers of affirmative action call it reverse discrimination, saying “affirmative action requires the very discrimination it is seeking to eliminate'. So, according to these challengers or opposers, this illogicality makes affirmative action thus counter-productive. However, other opposers also say affirmative action causes impromptu applicants to be rewarded by gaining employment or education in highly demanding educational institutions or jobs which inevitably turn into ultimate failure. They are not prepared, they do not have the education, or the training, they are looking to make a quick dollar and have an easy means of doing so. Many opponents of affirmative action speak out saying that affirmative action actually lowers the bar, and so rejects those who attempt excellence on their own merit and sense of real accomplishment.

“In the landmark Supreme court case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, June 28, 1978. This case-imposed limitations on affirmative action to ensure that providing greater opportunities for minorities did not come at the expense of the right s of the majority-affirmative action was unfair if it led to reverse discrimination. The case involved the Univ. of California, Davis, medial School, which had two separate admissions pools, one for standard applicates, and another for minority and economically disadvantaged students. The school reserved 16 o it’s 100 places for this latter group,” (Santini, 2019).

“Allan Bakke, a white applicant, was rejected twice even though there were minority applicants admitted with significantly lower scores than his. Bakke maintained that judging him on the basis of his race was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The supreme Court ruled that while race was a legitimate factor in school admissions, the use of such inflexible quotas as the medical school had set aside was not. The Supreme Court, however, was split 5-4 in its decision on the Bakke case and addressed only a minimal number of the many complex issues that had sprung up about affirmative action'.

There are other challengers who further claim that affirmative action has unwanted side-effects and that it fails to achieve its goals, they argue that it hampers resolution, thus for replacing old wrongs with what could be considered new wrongs. It undermines the successes of minorities, and reassures other groups to identify themselves as being the deprived in this situation even though they are not. This may cause an increase in racial tensions and then profit the more fortunate people that lay within minority groups at the expense of the dominated within a majority groups, example being that of the lower-class whites. Some opponents believe, among other things, that affirmative action cheapens the accomplishments of people who belong to a group it is supposed to be helping, therefore does this not make affirmative action in all actuality discriminatory.

As we can see, affirmative action, though created to help those who have had scars, has taken a turn that now resembles new bias, new racial tensions, new issues for the work place, and educational system. Affirmative Action only stands to prove that as a nation we cannot just pick up and learn to move past race, sex, national origin, we still are engraved in bias and discrimination. We need to learn to move past what we see on someone’s skin and who they praise and learn to love and accept our fellow persons as just that, a person. We all come in different packages, not all our fair, do we need a system that helps, yes, but only giving to those because of past infractions of nation, is not teaching anyone to better themselves through hard work and determination but through handouts and privileges. Let us become a nation that our forefathers established for us, a nation of hard workers who can achieve anything if we work hard to do it. Who allows help but not government handouts. Let’s find a different direction for Affirmative Action, one that benefits all people.

References:

1. “Affirmative Action History.” Affirmative Action, equal opportunity, diversity. University of Rhode Island – Santini, Robin, 2019. Retrieved 8 Dec. 2019 from: web.uri.edu/affirmative action/affirmative-action-history/
2. Boundless. “Affirmative Action.” Sociology – Cochise College Boundless, 2008 Aug. 2016. Retrieved 8 Dec. 2019 from: https://www.boundless.com/users/493555/textbooks/sociology-cochise-college/race-and-ethnicity-10/race-and-ethnicity-in-the-u-s-84/affirmative-action-492-3190/
3. “John F. Kennedy, White House color photo portrait.” Retrieved 8 Dec. 2019 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_F._Kennedy,_White_House_color_photo_portrait.jpg Wikipedia Public domain.