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Affirmative Action Hurts White People

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“Affirmative Action may not be a perfect system, but there should be no doubt that it has endangered many successes. It has opened the doors of America’s most elite educational institutions to minority students, granting them unprecedented opportunities” (Ogletree 12). Thanks to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson a policy that prohibits employment and education discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, and sex is offered today to those who suffer from said discriminations (A Brief History). Affirmative action has opened abundant openings for minorities, allowing the cycle of going to college to be passed down generations and provided job opportunities that otherwise would not be considered by most. Affirmative …show more content…

After all, it gives minorities what some would call, an unfair advantage. One point Anne Hull makes in her article “Affirmative Action Hurts White People” concerns readers that affirmative action is unconstitutional. She goes into detail by telling the story of a girl named Jennifer Gratz, a white applicant rejected from her dream college. Jennifer claimed that though she had worked extremely hard to have polished credentials, she fell short to a minority student with the same GPA and test scores all because of race. After being rejected, Gratz pursued a lawsuit against the University of Michigan, raising the question if affirmative action is still need in higher education (Hull 31). Gratz and Hull are not alone on the defense side of affirmative action. In his article “University Affirmative Action Admissions Policies Are Toxic,” Robert Cherry asserts that “affirmative action admissions policies disportionately accept students with lower-than-average test score and grades. As a result, they are not adequately prepared for the rigors of top-tier universities.” In making this comment, Cherry clearly favors for affirmative action to be taken out of higher education. He supports his argument with data that suggest that minorities are not performing as well as whites because some colleges lower their standards in order to accept more minorities. Implying that this only discourages minorities and puts them in situations where they can not reach their full potential. Both arguments make very good points, yet they seem to miss the big picture, which is that the benefits of affirmative action outweigh the downsides

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