Affirmative Action Is the Wrong Action
The United States of America has long been a country divided by race. Hate has pervaded her existence since her conception, and now today’s society is forced to deal with those issues. Minorities have suffered at the hands of the white male majority for centuries as the social activities of the old war were brought to the new colonies, only to ferment and continue to affect the lives of all who lived within her borders. There is no doubting that this continued discrimination is a problem; however, the question arises with how to deal with it. Legislation has been passed to remedy the situation, yet has been seemingly ineffective. Affirmative action has caused problems without fulfilling its purpose. The downfall of affirmative action is that it is the wrong action; the United States society has problems, including an underlying tension of hate, but they cannot be fixed by the government’s laws; they will be fixed when society changes how it views its members.
Affirmative action was put into affect with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Eastland 22). The purposes of affirmative action are noble at best-in theory they would serve to end the discriminatory practices so rampant in the American society. The goals were to repair or negate the effects of past discrimination, move towards diversity in both the private and public sector, to encourage representation in the work force, and to increase the economic levels of both women and minorities (Doverspike 3).
The outlined goals of affirmative action are what we need for this country. The United States society needs to change the way it sees and treats its citizens. The methods that affirmative action uses, however, are not conducive to achieving those goals. The government simply has not been effective in implementing its programs (Bergman 60). Affirmative action is supposed to rid the country of discrimination, but in its own practices it continues that discrimination by not awarding individuals based on merit. It goes against the “American values…of fairness and individualism” as it judges people on what racial group they belong to and gives benefits based on that classification (Puddington 70). Affirmative action is self-refuting in its practices, working to end discrimination by furthering it to fulfill its purposes. Using race to move away from decisions based on race is ineffective by definition. Its “inherent injustice” is inexcusable (Skrentny 20). Whenever individuals are distinguished by their race or sex, there is room allowed for racism or discrimination (Eastland 195). It is simply ludicrous to think that a plan that is flawed in theory can actually work in practice. Furthermore, counting women in the ‘disadvantaged’ group brings the number of people in the minority category to two-thirds of the population (Block 47). If legislation is made to aid two-thirds of the population, where does that leave the one-third of the population that is not...
