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Affirmative Action Argumentative Essay

553 Words3 Pages

Jenna Boelter

Affirmative Action

Affirmative action programs are meant to give everyone an equal playing field. African Americans, women, people with disabilities and others facing discrimination are benefited by affirmative action. It helps disadvantaged people coming from places where they’re not given many opportunities to be able to advance where they otherwise could not. Overtime, affirmative action has created opportunities for African Americans in employment and education. Although affirmative action is the cause of many heated debates, it is a necessary program in America today. In 1961, President Kennedy first introduced the term “affirmative action” as a method to ensure that applicants are employed without regard to their race. In 1965, only five percent of undergraduate students, two percent of medical students, and one percent of law students in the country were African American. Then, President Lyndon Johnson signed an Executive Order that required government contractors to increase the number of minority employees by using affirmative action policies. Over time, enrollment rates for …show more content…

It’s important to remember affirmative action is a response to the discrimination that already exists. Even with affirmative action, women continue to earn seventy-seven cents for every male dollar. African Americans continue to have twice the unemployment rate of white people. Only two research universities in states with affirmative action bans have at least the same proportion of black students as the state’s college-age population. “Many events in recent years have served as important reminders that our Nation, despite path-breaking progress on some fronts, continues to face, and at times to struggle with, matters of race and inclusion that remain ever present in our communities,” lawyers for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wrote in a brief to the

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