Affirmative Action: Progress or Setback?

Affirmative action sets minorities and women back instead of pushing them forward. This policy is reverse discrimination.

“Born of the civil rights movement three decades ago, affirmative action calls for minorities and women to be given special consideration in employment, education and contracting,” says Dan Froomkin of the “Washington Post.”

Affirmative action gives employers and college admission the right to select a minority or woman for the mere reason of their race or sex. An African American student can legally be accepted to a higher learning institute over a Caucasian student, even if they are equal students on paper. Employers and colleges seem to want to fill quotas so that they will not be accused of discrimination. Affirmative action is discrimination. I cannot speak for the minorities, but as a woman, I can say that I would rather be denied a job that someone was more qualified to uphold, than to be given a job to fill a quota because I am a woman.

Diversity is a wonderful asset to the learning environment. It helps us to become one as a nation and to learn of other cultures. Without diversity, most people could only hope to learn of cultures from secondary sources. With so many different races and cultures, it would be shameful not to tap into that wealth of information.

Affirmative action is not the answer. Diversity cannot be forced. When people are forced into concepts like this, the outcome isn’t real and genuine. In kindergarten when your Mother farced you to play with the outcast child in our class, you didn’t want to. Later, when you saw an outcast child you were compelled to befriend them because you didn’t know what you were missing out on. People cannot be forced to do things. If time and freedom are given to people today, then eventually things will come together.