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Affirmative Action Argumentative Essay

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Affirmative action was first proposed by Vice President Richard Nixon in 1959, and would be expanded upon during the civil rights era in the 1960s to end discrimination, and be away for white people to atone for what they had done to minorities in the past. Affirmative action allows minorities who are stricken by poverty to be accepted into school that they would otherwise not be. Thought this program had good intentions and heart, in reality it would only cause discrimination to become worse. Affirmative actions must be abandoned due to the negative impact it has on our colleges.
There are a lot of arguments that defend the use of affirmative action and advocate its effect on college campuses. Supporters of affirmative action believe that no matter what we do minorities will always be at a disadvantaged and affirmative action is the only way to close the racial gap. Supporters believe that minorities could never be given a fair chance at attending college unless affirmative action is adopted into the school acceptance program. Supporters …show more content…

According to an L.A. Times survey done in 1987, when colleges admits minorities through affirmative action their performance often shows that problems have not been solved. “The survey presented evidence that around 90 percent of regularly admitted UCLA students pass the California bar exam, while the passing rate for students admitted under affirmative action only 30 percent" (Finley 1). The problem is that many minorities are already at a disadvantage when the time comes to apply for colleges. It can only place underqualified minorities into a difficult college environment that discourages all of its students and develops. Instead of focusing our attentions on colleges we should instead focus on the early school years that are preparing students for the tough years to

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Affirmative action was designed by the federal government and seemed to be a strong tactic but there are many imperfections in this policy. For example, California vs Bakke is a famous court case based off of reverse discrimination. A white male by the name Allan Bakke was denied admission to The University of California medical school. Instead of picking Bakke the school accepted a less qualified black male because the school must accept at least 16 minorities out of 100 into the medical program. The university uses race as an aid to admit minorities and increase diversity instead of accepting well qualified individuals.

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Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States founded primarily for the education of African Americans. Prior to the mid-1960s, HBCUs were virtually the only institutions open to African Americans due to the vast majority of predominantly white institutions prohibiting qualified African Americans from acceptance during the time of segregation. As such, they are institutional products of an era of discrimination and socially constructed racism against African Americans (Joseph, 2013). Successfully, millions of students have been educated in spite of limited resources, public contempt, accreditation violations, and legislative issues. The purpose of this research paper is to discuss

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Katznelson’s argument that affirmative action policies were enacted with purposeful, deliberate discrimination is convincing. Namely, he considers the historical context that would have shaped Americans at the time and swayed their opinions. For example, Katznelson references the Civil War and the end of slavery, and how these events shaped the attitudes of key players like the Southern Democrats, which would then result in the faulty policies that perpetuated affirmative action’s favoritism of whites. His evidence is sufficient as well. Katznelson highlights the trend of Southern Democrats interfering in affirmative action policies and the footholds they had in specific acts.

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 Reader pg. 244 “ those many in our society that are darker, poorer, more identifiably foreign will continue to suffer the poverty, marginalization, immersion and incarceration.” Statistics are staggering Racial Disparities in Incarceration African Americans constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population, they are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites, what’s shocking is that one in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001 and if the trends continues one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. I am for affirmative action, as I believe that when the late President John F Kennedy signed the affirmative action on March 6th 1961,

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The Supreme Court has not offered an opinion on affirmative action in higher education since its 1978 ruling in Regents of the Univ. Of California v. Bakke. In that determination, the Supreme Courts Justice Powell argued that a university could take race into account as one among a number of factors in student admissions for the purposed of achieving student body diversity. Since the time of this ruling, affirmative action programs with regard to student admissions, financial assistance, and even faculty employment have been founded mainly on achieving diversity. Since the Bakke decision, affirmative action has been an increasingly contentious issue between those in favor of its employment and those opposed to it.

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Despite low ACT and SAT scores, black students who are unprepared scholastically are admitted into universities only to later struggle academically (Kahlenberg, 1996). Does it matter if

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Weak affirmative action which is just an effort to ensure that all qualified minority groups are considered whereas the strong one is when some sort of preference is given to the minority candidate. Later the author concludes that he will focus on the strong affirmative action because it is the most controversial one. Then the author gives us many arguments of different people and critics for and against affirmative action. Later on, David Boonin gives us his own arguments in favor of affirmative action which are 1) the unfair disadvantage argument; 2) the (other) compensation argument; 3) the appeal to diversity; 4) the need for role models; 5) the bias-elimination argument; 6) race as a qualification. “I conclude that while affirmative action may prove to have some desirable features and some beneficial consequences, there’s no reason to believe that it’s morally obligatory.

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