The Pros And Cons Of Affirmative Action

Affirmative action has been the topic of debate for the past 51 years. It is the process that favors those who have been racially discriminated in the past and that has rejected many better qualified students for the sake of a racially diverse academic campus. Signed into effect by Lyndon B Johnson in 1965, affirmative action is meant to be beneficial to American society and minorities. However, the opposite is happening. Affirmative action needs to be done away with in American colleges because it destroys the idea of a meritocracy. provides a less prepared workplace, and it leads to reverse discrimination. Affirmative action destroys the idea of meritocracy. The basis of American meritocracy and the American Dream is that those who work

Advocates of affirmative action say that the action should stand because it makes up for the centuries of oppression that whites inflicted on minority races. However, this makes the problem worse. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and affirmative action is discriminatory against whites by reserving spots for less qualified minorities. People will claim that whites are more well to do and therefore have a better chance than a minority, however, 4.2 million white children are in poverty stricken families, more than any minority race (Poverty by the Numbers, para. 1). The way affirmative action is set up, a poverty stricken white student who works hard and uses discipline may be passed over a rich minority student on the basis of race. A landmark affirmative action ruling was Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke in 1977. According to Regents of the University of California v. Bakke by Oyez, Allan Bakke, a 35 year old white man, applied and failed twice to get into the UC Davis Medical school. The school had reserved 16% of its places for “qualified minorities” as an effort to redress unfair minority exclusions. Bakke’s qualifications exceeded those of minority students who had gotten in, but was rejected on the basis of race. He sued the school for violating the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Rights and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court ruled on June 25, 1978 that the school’s policy of 16% of spots going to minorities was unconstitutional, as stated in the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that race was allowed as one of the admissions criteria for colleges (Regents of the University, para. 1-3). However, by allowing colleges to choose students based on race, they may be discriminating against certain