Affirmative Action Pros And Cons

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Affirmative Action is defined as “An action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination, especially in relation to employment or education; positive discrimination”. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy helped create the Committee of Equal Employment Opportunity which helped Minorities and women get jobs (Race 1). In the beginning, Affirmative Action had good intentions trying to right the wrongs done to minorities, but today it is not doing anything but harming the non-minorities. In the 1970’s, courts started to eliminate Affirmative Action programs that used quotas (Race 1); these programs reserved a certain number of spots for minorities, which later was declared unconstitutional (Crash Course). For example, in 1978 the …show more content…
Take Clarence Thomas for example. Clarence Thomas, an Associate Judge for the Supreme Court of the
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United States, states that various people believe he only got to where he was because of Affirmative Action even though he could have been in the same place if Affirmative Action didn’t even exist. Thomas has vocalized that if he had the chance, he would overturn Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) which has been the origin for modern Affirmative Action (Justia 15). Another thing is that Affirmative Action is not needed anymore. Affirmative Action used to be needed in the 1960’s and 70s because of racial discrimination, this was a way to provide equal opportunity to minorities, but now, since there is not as much discrimination and also since minorities have the same rights as non-minorities, Affirmative Action is no longer needed to level the playing field when it comes to education and work. “Affirmative Action was never meant to be permanent, and now is truly time to move on to another approach” (Kaufman 2). Affirmative Action also solves a problem that does not exist. Since minorities and non-minorities have the same liberties, no one is at
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Their scores might be lower because of turmoil inside the family or lack of opportunity. They might have had to work multiple jobs to sustain their family or they might have been financially unstable so they might have not been able to access proper learning resources. We should still have some program to give benefits to people, but we should not have it so it is only by race. We should not have it so it is limited to only minorities, but to all people. But how? By considering applicants by motivation and opportunity. Race will not be a factor to go over when considering an