Affirmative Action Related To The Civil Rights Movement

"You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say you are free to compete with all the others, and still just believe that you have been completely fair.” Said President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 (civilrights.org) while the civil rights movement was at its peak. Ever since then affirmative action has been used to give “equal” opportunities to people who belong to a minority. According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Affirmative action means “positive steps taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and culture from which they have been historically excluded.” (Fullwinder, 2001) But when does

Since the creation of the united states racism has been an issue. Before the Civil War in the United States, black people were held as slaves and were subject to forced labour, being bought and sold and even cruelty. After the Civil War ended in 1865, slavery was no longer legal but states that used to own slaves would use a new system called “Jim Crow Laws” that would attempt against the rights of minorities. In 1965 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous speech “I Have a Dream” in which he sparked the movement that forever changed the way that social organization and job opportunities in the U.S.A. look at minorities. Affirmative action was created in 1961 by President J. F. Kennedy to make programs that would then give equal opportunities to people of all

For an example, that diversity in higher education provides an educational advantage for all students, both personally and intellectually (Affirmative action, ncsl.com). Even though this is in many ways true, the admission to one school should not be determined by the color of one’s skin or someones historical descent, but for the academic merits, and even though, it is very true that in average disadvantaged groups tend to grow up with less opportunities, there should be no preference, affirmative action should be applied by preparing students for higher education or to defend them for discrimination but not to give them preference. Shelby Steels, Ph. D. from the Santa Clara university, said that admitting poorly qualified students into universities will not only harm the better qualified ones, but it will also harm the lesser qualified ones by putting them in a position for which they are not prepared, or qualified (pardon the redundancy), and will end up dropping out (Shelby, 1992). This might not be the case for many subjects, but reality is that jobs and schools have requirements that are meant to be completed in order to successfully fulfill the ties required for the