Discrimination Has Altered The Agenda In The U.S.

4 Pages 906 Words

Discrimination has altered the agenda in the U.S.

Affirmative action in theory and in thought is intended to promote the welfare of this country’s minorities by supporting the idea that individuals are equal and should not be judged by race or sex. Therefore, in situations like job and university applications, we should consider minorities to be as feasible a choice for hire as a white male candidate, taking into consideration their background. In short, it tries to give minorities that have been at a disadvantage their whole life, an advantage they have never been open too!
All things considered, this does not happen. Instead, “quotas” are established and the discrimination that was once placed on the minorities now turns the other way. Let’s use a hypothetical situation to further the understanding of what affirmative action does. You are sending in your first college application to Harvard. There is only one spot left open between you and someone who is African American. You have slightly better grades, both of you excelled in sports, you have more volunteer hours, and completed two foreign languages where he only has one. Applying affirmative action, you would not get the last position because of the need for ethnic diversity in the college atmosphere. Is that fair? Is that right? You clearly had a better record then him.
If affirmative action is supposed to support the individual, why is it solely based on race and why doesn’t it apply to every situation based on the potential of the


individual involved? What would happen if in this hypothetical situation I just told you about actually occurred? It does.
In the case Grutter vs. Bollinger the question was proposed “Does the University of Michigan’s use of racial preferences in undergraduate and law school admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. § 2000d), or...