Affirmative Action

Essay by ozgurmadranUniversity, Bachelor'sA, April 2011

download word file, 10 pages 0.0

Affirmative Action or Affirmative Discrimination

Affirmative action refers to an attempt at equality in the society. It claims that each person receive equal opportunities in the classroom as well as the work force. Not only would this would be subjected to minorities but to women as well. Every sector in America should be equal and unprejudiced - or so proponents say. However, adopting affirmative action would force many employers to replace hard-working employees with those less qualified simply as a consequence of their gender or ethnic background (Sterba, 2003).

We can analyze this concept from the perspective of two opponents as "Arguments for 'Affirmative Action is Reverse Discrimination'" and "Arguments against 'Affirmative Action is Reverse Discrimination'".

First of all, with reference to "Arguments for 'Affirmative Action is Reverse Discrimination'", the fact of affirmative action is that it attempts to end discrimination with discrimination, that is, reverse discrimination.

The purpose of affirmative action is to correct the past discrimination based on race, sex, religion, etc. But the way that affirmative action taken to achieve this is to sacrifice the rights of others, which leads to reverse discrimination: as we are all members of some minority or majority groups, helping one group would certainly disadvantage others. For example, in USA, under affirmative action, a company might prefer to hire the minority like women or colored people instead of white males, disregarding the criteria of whether they are better qualified. Under such circumstances, affirmative action is rather a reverse discrimination towards the white males. In the case of Allan Bakke, who sued the Regents of the University of California for being denied admission to the medical school in 1973 based on reverse discrimination (Bender, 1996), Bakke claimed that the university gave preferential treatment to less qualified applicants who belonged...