| Term Paper Title | Affirmative Action |
| # of Words | 1180 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 4.72 |
Affirmative Action
Papers are piling up on top of a desk. People are running around trying
to meet their deadlines. Assignments are being pushed back to later dates.
Phones are being answered, but put on hold for the next available
representatives. The president of the firm puts out a notice of hire. The word
is spread throughout the business community through the newspaper and the
internet. Resumes are received every business day. The board members of the
firm review hundreds of resumes that are received daily. They rate the
applications according to qualifications and experiences. The names are
disregarded at this point. A dozen of the applicants are chosen, and notified
to setup initial interviews. One applicant meets all the qualifications, and
has had numerous experiences in the field. This applicant clearly surpasses all
the other applicants. The commitee is very impressed by this young man. He
heads home in delight, hoping to hear from the marketing firm again.
Unfortunately, he never hears from
them again. The main reason why he was not chosen, was because of the color
of his skin. Since he is Asian, they could not hire him, because 50% of their
employees are Asian. Under the affirmative action, they must employ someone who
is underrepresented. This type of situation happens often. It is not the
qualifications, but the color of the skin that employers look for today.
Affirmative action is a step backwards. We are back to color and race
differences. We are all Americans and should be treated as so, not what
ethnicity we are. Affirmative action should be abolished solely because we do
not want to make the same mistake our society made in the past --- discriminate
according to color. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Many people say that we should keep affirmative action to render
fairness to the minorities because of the wrongs that was once put on to them.
This simply does not make sense. To compensate someone, a person must have gone
through an experience. People today did not go through such discrimination, as
their past ancestors. How can we punish someone for what they had no control?
Our white society today did not commit the wrongs that were committed a
generation ago. We should not punish them, but rather treat everyone fairly.
We should treat everyone as Americans. As Bakke quotes the Constitution,
"...The guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment extend to all persons. It's
language is explicit: "No State shall... deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It is settled beyond question
that the rights created by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment are, by
its terms, guaranteed to the individual." (Bakke, p.485)
In the past, we were fighting to abolish racial separation, but today, we have
affirmative action, which still brings about the separation of the different
races. We should fight for equality for all. Affirmative action affects
everyone, including our children.
Under the affirmative action law, our schools are currently recruiting
students according to race and color. According to a critic on affirmative
action,
"A college board survey, described in Andrew Hacker's Two Nations, in 1992 the
average combined SAT score for black students whose parents earn more than
$70,000 a year was 854, which was twenty-five points lower than the average SAT
for white students whose parents earn less than $20,000 a year." (Rosen, p.3)
In effect, the solution by supporters of affirmative action is to lower
the school's standards so that they can accept a more diverse group of students.
This solution is ridiculous, simply because everyone has a chance to do good.
It is just a matter of e...Read entire document
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