Affirmative action

Essay by renren March 2006

download word file, 5 pages 4.0

Personal Statement

One area of our winter class study that really interested me was affirmative action. As a woman from a minority background affirmative action is a factor that impacts and affects my life, and therefore is the area I would like to examine for my final paper. I will, or at least plan on focusing on race based and gender based affirmative action. I would also like to include recent studies specifically about race-based affirmative action in regards to acceptances within universities. Also, according to January 27 2003's cover story of Newsweek there is at the moment an imbalance at the university level in favour of males. Females are starting to outnumber males significantly. I would like to explore this issue further and explore whether there is an argument in favour of affirmative action in favour of males in admissions policies, or would there be reasons not to do so?

Brief Introduction To Topic (Definitions, Arguments etc):

Affirmative action can be described as "a policy or a program that seeks to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment" (www.answers.com).

Affirmative action is looked to be the nation's most ambitious attempt to redress its long history of racial and sexual discrimination. Many feel that affirmative action is essential in a just society and others feel that affirmative action seems to incite rather than ease the nation's internal divisions. In my essay I would like to explore the validity and effectiveness of affirmative action. Many theorists, including Ronald Dworkin, also question the validity and effectiveness of affirmative action; Does it work is their main question.

There are two arguments presented when examining affirmative action, the argument for affirmative action and the argument against affirmative action. An increasingly assertive opposition movement will argue...