Affirmative Action

2 Pages 573 Words

Affirmative action was created because of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s to increase diversity in America’s workplace. Since then, there has been plenty of controversy surrounding it.

Today, affirmative action programs have become more of a discriminatory system which gives less qualified applicants an edge on sex and skin color and nothing else. These programs have evolved to be less about civil rights to become more of a stepping stool. They also have added an increase of tension between all races. Activists have complained about companies having quotas for minorities and women so they can have a certain percentage of their working population. Since this does not have an emphasis on people that are the best for the job, this can be detrimental to the operation of the job market.

Affirmative action promotes the hiring of less skilled workers. It sometimes forces employers to choose the best worker, which is in the minority, they can find, regardless of whether they have the required job skills. For example, most universities and colleges have quotas for how many minority students they want or should enroll to the freshman class. Some people call the Affirmative Action Act “reverse discrimination”, but the act can be discrimination within itself. Reverse discrimination basically implies that we are discriminating against the “majority” instead of the usual “minority.”

The Civil Rights Act was created to have employers to consider applicants objectively in filling jobs within their companies. This was highly needed years ago, today, people overall are more educated then before. We should not have to help people who are not truly struggling from this at the expense of people who are qualified. Affirmative action is based on race and sex; it is not accurately based for measuring those who are most in need. By lowering the bar of admissions to universities and the work force, we are promoting and ensuring ...