Young Writers Society

We had to write an essay for close up stating our position on affirmative action. It has not been graded yet

Do you know what affirmative action is? Well affirmative action is when an employer or college has to give extra consideration to minorities or women. Like for example some colleges or employers have a certain number of spaces that have to be minorities or women. I think that congress should not pass a law requiring affirmative action.

Affirmative action was created to right the wrongs of past discrimination, and to also help make workplaces and college campuses a more diverse place. I feel that affirmative action is reverse discrimination, meaning it discriminates against the majority group and does not give them equal opportunities. By using affirmative action and quotas for admissions and hiring it takes only race and sex into account and ignores the qualifications of the minority. What if a minority gets a job or into a college because of affirmative action and quotas? Had there not been affirmative action and quotas they would have not gotten it because they were not as qualified as everyone else was. An example of this happening is in the Supreme Court case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. What happened is the Alan Bakke has applied to enter the University of California medical school twice. The medical school has one hundred spots where sixteen are set aside for minorities. Well Mr. Bakke had been rejected both times even though Mr. Bakke’s qualifications, meaning his test scores and GPA, exceeded the minorities’ qualifications that had been accepted into the medical school. The Supreme Court ruled that the use of racial quotas that were to be used in admissions violated the Equal Protection Clause of the fourteenth amendment, but they could use race as one of many factors in admissions. Now how is affirmative action fair? Doesn’t our society say that we are supposed to reward the hardest workers and the people with the best qualifications? Instead of rewarding the people with the best qualifications, it rewards people based on race and sex, something people cannot control.

America was founded on the belief of equality, meaning that everyone should be treated and have equal opportunities regardless of social status, economic status, race, sex, or religion. By using affirmative action, we are not enforcing this basic policy that America was founded on. Justice John Harlan in the dissenting opinion in Plessy v Ferguson stated “But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/h ... 37_ZD.html) This means that the Constitution made it so everyone is equal regardless of race and that no one class of citizens she have more power over the other. What Justice John Harlan means when he said that our constitution is colorblind is that it gives that everyone is given the same rights regardless of the color of their skin. By using affirmative action in admissions to college and in hiring practices, you are giving people special rights and opportunities because of the color of their skin, not because of their qualifications. Instead of using affirmative action, you should look at the people’s qualifications, because everything like the constitution should be colorblind and give everyone equal opportunities. When you apply for college, I feel that they should not take your name and race down. They should instead give you a number and just use the number when looking at your qualifications. That way the board will be color blind when considering whether they want to let you into their college.

The other side says we need affirmative action to encourage diversity of opinions in workplaces and college campuses. However, by using affirmative action we are not encouraging diversity of opinions. We are just encouraging the diversity of way people looks. Who benefits from affirmative action is the minorities that are living in suburban America, because many of the minorities that live in the innercity or on reservations tend to fall through the cracks in the American education system. They tend to fall through the cracks of the American Educational system, because they tend to receive a lower level of education. So therefore, the colleges do not want to accept the courses that they took while in high school because they are a lower level. For example, a math class taken by someone in the tenth grade might be the level of an eighth grade class out in suburbia. Instead of using affirmative action in hiring and admissions to get more diversity we need to improve the education system so that someone that goes to school on a reservation or the innercity will get the same education as someone from the suburbs. So therefore, they will have the same qualifications as someone from suburbia will.

America is a rainbow of races, classes, and opinions but some workplaces and college campuses are not representive of America’s rainbow. Some people want to use affirmative action to make the workplaces more diverse and representive of that rainbow. I feel affirmative action is reverse discrimination, because it does not guarantee the same opportunities and rights to everyone. Affirmative action also completely disregards a person’s qualifications that they have worked very hard to receive. Affirmative action rewards the minority for being a minority not for being the best-qualified person.