Affirmative Words

The sample essay on Affirmative Words deals with a framework of research-based facts, approaches and arguments concerning this theme. To see the essay’s introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion, read on.

Affirmative action is one of the more recent and
popular civil rights policies that affect today’s
society. Affirmative action can be described as
nothing more than a lower educational standard for
minorities. It has become quite clear that
affirmative action is unfair and unjust. However,
in order to blend race, culture, and genders to
create a stable and diverse society, someone has
to give. How can this be justified? Is there a
firm right or wrong to affirmative action? Is this
policy simply taking something from one person and
giving it to someone else, or is there more to
this policy, such as affirmative action being a
reward for years of oppression against those whom
it affects? There have been many affirmative
action plans and experiments attempted over the
years; however most have been largely
unsuccessful. These plans range from Title VII of
the Civil Rights Act to the Rehabilitation Act of
1973.

In 1986 the Department of Labor published an
experiment entitled workforce 2000, which
investigated the number of the most recent
entrants into the working class from the years
nineteen eighty-five to two thousand (Hyde 1).
“The analysis showed that of those who would be
newly entering the workforce, only fifteen percent
would be white males”(Hyde 1). This course
approaching prevalent accomplishment of
affirmative action is the end outcome of an
operation that began in eighteen sixty-four with
the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Get quality help now

Bella Hamilton

Verified

Proficient in: Human Rights

5 (234)

“ Very organized ,I enjoyed and Loved every bit of our professional interaction ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

(Hyde1) This act forbids discrimination on the
grounds of race, color, religion, and national
origin. Title VII was meant to serve as a vehicle
for affirmative action; however, in order to
address the inequities of the nations employment
system, another method was needed. About one year
after Title VII went into effect, President
Johnson required government contractors to take
affirmative action in the employment of
minorities. With this idea, he introduced
executive order 11246 on September twenty-fourth
of nineteen sixty-five and order 113755 for women
shortly after. (Hyde 2) In nineteen seventy-three
the Rehabilitation Act was introduced.

Affirmative Words

This act
enjoined federal contractors that have a contract
existing over two thousand five hundred employees
to take affirmative action in the employment of
people with handicaps. (Hyde 3) There is no doubt
that there will always be controversy with
affirmative action until an effective policy is
put forth. Many citizens, organizations, and
businesses seem to be slow to realize that
government mandated race and sexually based
preferences can only be used under extraordinary
circumstances. There are many equal opportunity
programs, such as the NAACP, that are designed to
protect minoritys rights and privileges.
Therefore, there is no need for affirmative action
to be used to its fullest extent in the world
today. This policy is wrong because it involves
reverse discrimination, promotes the hiring of
less qualified workers, and basically does more
wrong than right. A person should be hired for a
job position because this person is the most
qualified, not because this person is a minority
or a female.

Suppose an employer hires a person
because he or she is a minority; if another
applicant is more qualified for the job, then the
employer is the person being negatively affected.
If it is a prejudice act for people to
discriminate against minorities, then what makes
it right for people to discriminate against the
majority? Either way, someone is being
discriminated against and affirmative action only
legitimizes and legalizes it. In my personal
opinion, affirmative action is a plan that can
only enhance racial issues. For instance, what if
someone loses out on the job position he or she
deserved because this person is a part of the
majority? Would race, gender, or a handicap not
have anything to do with this injustice?
Affirmative action has proven to be an injustice
to the majority of society. Over the years there
have been numerous cases in which this policy has
harmed a great deal of people in order to
establish so-called justice for an elite few.
Pasour explains one of the thousands of injustices
that affirmative action has provided: Affirmative
action promotes the hiring of less skilled
workers. It sometimes forces employers to choose
the best of the minority workers they can find,
regardless of whether they have the required job
skills. For example, Duke University recently
adopted a resolution requiring each department to
hire at least one new black for a faculty position
by 1993.

However, only six blacks received PH.D’s
in mathematics in 1987 in all of the U.S., casting
doubts as to whether it would be possible for each
department to find a well-qualified black, much
less hire one (1). How does the Supreme Court
justify that affirmative action is a legitimate
plan that benefits the US? The Supreme Court has
developed a test that supposedly proves
affirmative action to be useful. The case history
indicates that the Supreme Court will uphold
affirmative action efforts as long as it satisfies
the affirmative action test(Hyde 6). As an
affirmative action plan is prepared yearly, it is
put to a test containing three simple mandatory
objectives. However, although the objectives are
strictly focused on helping the underrepresented,
they do not seem to mention anything about not
interfering with the rest of the worlds
advancement in schools and work force. Affirmative
action in college is worse, because a person not
in a minority can be cheated out of their
education he or she is seeking.

Therefore, the
minority would again get the better job. Without
saying minorities should not get financial aid or
scholarships, a person should receive them for
their achievements, not because they are a certain
race, gender, or from a certain culture. Is this
truly necessary in order to proportionalize a
school to the extent that it is in exact ratio to
the different types of people in the US? If there
is a certain amount of people from one culture in
a college and they are the most eligible, then
that is fine. However, why take this privilege
from someone that deserves it because someone else
is in the minority? Maybe affirmative action is
necessary in come cases, because anyone that is
not blind would have to admit that minorities are
often underrepresented or simply forgot about.
This policy is the only way that they can be get
the job or school that they deserve. However, it
has gone too far when many are punished so a few
can jump in the place they want and may deserve,
just not as much as others. Who can say that they
would not take advantage of the plan? The answer
is very few, and the ones that do take advantage
of it still no that it is just not the right way
to do things.

It is hard to criticize the people
who do get into job position or school because of
affirmative action, they are only doing what comes
natural. That is taking advantage of what they can
because there are so many chances and the one you
miss could be the last one. The only thing that
should be criticized is the plan and society
itself. It is seldom that affirmative action
benefits society in todays society. “Proponents of
affirmative action view their opponents with
suspicion for good reason. They know not all of
their opponents are racist; they also know that
many of them are” (Guernsey 66).

“The only thing
that will enable affirmative action-or similarly
any similarly controversial policy-to be debated
in an atmosphere free of suspicions is for the
surrounding social context to be decisively
transformed” (Guernsey 66). The only way that
affirmative action could work would be in a
society with no diversity, which would mean that
affirmative action is needed. As long as there are
different cultures, there will always be natural
hostility between them. As long as there is
diversity, affirmative action will only create
more hostility between these different cultures.
Lets say that affirmative action gets its way;
what will happen? Every business that hires
someone only because of their culture or gender
will only be hurting themselves. This is because
everyone that were undergraduates or unqualified
will not do as good of a job as the ones that were
not hired because they were not a minority.
Affirmative action can also be dangerous. This is
because they are not only cheating themselves but
cheating the ones who they serve.

For instance, if
an architect firm hires a drafter based on
affirmative action instead of their skill, then
they are hurting the people who get their drafting
done through their firm. The Supreme Court
considers Affirmative action to be a very serious
order of business. Their views of affirmative
action are often very different than those of
people who get the worst end of the bargain. Many
of them only see that affirmative action is a good
plan to represent the underrepresented. If this
were the only aspect of affirmative action, then
no one would be against it. However, something
must be blinding them of the thousands of
Americans who are shafted habitually in order to
pacify a few.

Bibliography: Work Cited Guersey,
JoAnn Bren. Affirmative action: A problem or a
Remedy. Lerner publications Company, Minneapolis
MN, 1993. Pasour, Earnest. Affirmative Action: A
Counter Productive Policy. The Foundation for
Economic Education.

(January 1989): 11Pars. 29
Feb, 2000.