Essay/Term paper: Anti-affirmative action

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Affirmative Action

Anti-Affirmative Action

Patrick Ching

"That student was accepted because of affirmative action policies."
With my first intake of the phrase, I realized that the student, whom I knew and
worked with so many times, the one with such a lack of motivational ability,
confidence, and ideas, was now occupying my chances towards a preferred school.
"Affirmative action", I soon found out, was used by President John F. Kennedy
over 30 years ago to imply equality and equal access to all, disregarding race,
creed, color, or national origin. As a policy setting out to resolve the
problems of discrimination, Affirmative Action is simply nothing more than a
quota of reverse discrimination.
Affirmative Action emphasizes prospective opportunity more towards
statistical measures. It promotes the hiring and acceptance of less experienced
jobs of the workforce and less able students. Sometimes the affirmative action
policies forces employers and schools to choose the best workers and less
privileged students of the minority, in all, regardless of their potential lack
basic skills. As remarked by Maarten de Wit, an author who's article I found on
the World Wide Web, affirmative action beneficiaries are "not the best pick, but
only the best pick from a limited group." Another article I found,
"Affirmative action: A Counter-Productive Policy" by Ernest Pasour also on the
W.W.W., is one example which reveals that Duke, a very famous and prestigious
university, adopted a resolution requiring each of it's department to hire at
least one new African-American for a faculty position the 1993 date. More
proofs of Affirmative Action in action is the admission practices at the
University of California Berkeley. In the same article by Pasour, it states
that while whites or Asian-Americans need at least a 3.7 grade point average
through high school to be in consideration for admission in Berkeley, most
minorities with much lower standards are automatically admitted. All the
preferential treatment may provide a basis for employers, employees, as well as
real applicable students to fight for an end to Affirmative Action.
The development of more racial tensions are yet another part of the
Affirmative Action policy. Tensions between blacks and whites and other racial
groups at U.S. colleges are related to preferential treatment. Tensions at the
workplace also deal with the toleration of race and sex rather than individual
abilities. Racial discrimination was said to have grown with the implementation
Affirmative Action. Examples of black students attending North Carolina
colleges stating that they were treated like affirmative action cases though
they were not, conjured more of the racial discriminatory feelings. As
described by the above author, Ernest Pasour, professors at those colleges
already assumed that the African-American students lack the qualifications, thus
always seeking to help by asking if any tutoring or other assistance is needed.
Solutions to the Affirmative Action policies may be simple and complex.
The example alternatives provided by Brian Sterlitz in his article,
"Alternatives to Affirmative Action" found on the W.W.W., are: (1) rebuilding of
civil society in minority communities; the strengthening of community
associations, which will provide a foundation for collective development, (2)
increasing minority and female applicant flow; maybe easy to accomplish with the
addition of minority colleges and universities in campus recruitment programs
at individual companies, and (3) most important promote broad policies for
economic opportunity and security that benefit the low and middles-income
Americans; Americans should work together toward broad based economic policies
by consistently emphasizing broad-based, race-neutral policies. Examples may be,
public investment, national health reform, an enlarged earned income, tax credit,
child support assurance, and other policies benefiting families with young
children.