A Case Agianst Affirmative Action
Ever since the American social revolution precipitated by the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and ‘60’s, the United States’ government has sought an appropriate resolution concerning the question of race relations. In this country it was soon realized that, despite constitutional amendments and various legislative initiatives ensuring equal treatment for all citizens, widespread “institutional” racism continued to act as a reinforcement of social disparities along racial lines. As a result, minorities – African Americans in particular – have exclusively benefited from policies and programs aimed at narrowing this social gap between minorities and majorities. The policy of affirmative action in college admissions, and its relation to employment and narrowing social inequalities between minorities and majorities, however, is inherently unjust. In this paper, I will attempt to explain why affirmative action is not only unjust, but also a misguided policy which will reap results contrary to its ultimate goals. Affirmative action, it seams to many White people and a few minorities, is hypocritically unjust for fairly obvious reasons. For one, why would any social policy aimed at providing equal treatment for
The real case against affirmative action, however, is not that the special treatment of minorities is unfair to White students, or that social disadvantage is an inappropriate qualification for college admission, but rather that the special treatment of White applicants will reap consequences contrary to its own goals by widening the social gap between minorities and majorities. If it is the policy of a particular institution to shape admissions by the preferential treatment of certain social groups, then admittees from non-preferred social groups will be especially better qualified. For example, let’s say that School X has one hundred slots available for new applicants, but has reserved twenty of those slots only for minorities. The other eighty slots are open for the top eighty applicants without regard to race. Admission to School X does not depend on being in the top one hundred applicants, as it did before affirmative action, but now on being in the top eighty. Lowering standards for one group is automatically raising standards for others. If the special treatment one group receives is facing tougher competition for a limited amount of slots, then winning that competition will mean more than it once did. A degree from School X will mean something very different in the hands of majorities than minorities. Proponents of affirmative action policies, on the other hand, would probably respond to the notion that affirmative action is unfair to White students by arguing that d
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Approximate Word count = 1008
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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