Affirmative Action is Not Justified

Thanks for taking up the challenge. Before I explain my arguments for why we need affirmative action I want to unpick some of the problems with your argument. Firstly, I need to explain why this is not "reverse racism". This is not true because nobody is, in any way, arguing that non-ethnic minorities are somehow lower people than ethnic minorities or marginalised groups. We are however recognising that we live in an unequal society with levels of discrimination against marginalised groups such as black people or women. Therefore, we are recognising that they come from a position of disadvantage and thus we have an imbalance that we need to fix. Therefore, we need a level of positive discrimination at the top to adjust this imbalance due to the negative discrimination inherent in our society. So it's not as simple as "reverse racism" because it is not racist. Rather it is recognising an unfair status-quo and discriminating in a way that equalises our society and thus fixing the historic injustices faced by marginalised groups. We see that right now white men are at a position of immense advantage and thus we need to put in measures to lift up others in order to end the imbalance we already have. So it's not "reverse racism"; its pursuing equality. Next, I do believe that people should exercise some personal responsibility however group identity still matters because our society is inherently racist and inherently sexist. Thus the government can't just sit on its backside and expect POC to "depend on themselves". The reality is that they can't just "depend on themselves" because they face so much racial discrimination. Therefore, the government does have to put into place policies of AA in order to help minorities to "lift themselves up". Then you made this weird assertion that white men were more likely to be CEOs because they are more qualified and more interested in those fields. I wonder why? They are more qualified because less POC go to university due to their disadvantages and because women are discriminated against in the work place. Plus I don't believe that POC and women should be expected to "emulate" the supposedly great white and asian men. Why should the workplace be so masculine? Is that actually fair? I think that the workplace should be changed to suit society and not the other way round. Finally, women DO want to be CEOS but they can't due to discrimination and a society that has told them for years "you are girl and should do girly jobs like nursing". Now onto my arguments. Firstly, we live in a society which is inherently racist, sexist and discriminatory. We have a gender pay gap where women earn 71 cents to every dollar that men make, revealing the underrepresentation of women in the workplace and the implicit bias against them. The raw gap between white employees and black employees in the United States can be as high as 30%. In a recent survey of over 5,200 newly employed workers, black job seekers were offered significantly less compensation than whites by potential new employers. U. S. employers are also more likely to turn away applicants if they have names that sound African-American. Job seekers with white-sounding names get one callback per 10 resumes, while applicants with African-American sounding names get just one callback per 15 resumes. Between 1979-2012, median wages rose for white women by 31%, but only 20% for African American women. The following link further reveals the effects of implicit bias: . http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu... Clearly we have an identifiable problem caused by bias and prejudice. So how will AA solve this problem? Well, we know that just sitting back will not solve this problem as the current system of discrimination will just continue thus a degree of government action is necessary. AA does many things to help. Firstly, it puts people from these marginalised groups into positions of power and influence who would not be there without it. This can help to change stereotypes as people will see these examples of successful minorities and successful women therefore challenging their misconceptions that such groups are "not hard-working enough" to succeed. In this way, racist and sexist attitudes can be forcibly reversed. Secondly, these new POCs and women in such positions can act as conscious or subconscious role models to other POCs and women. The reality is that currently many women and POCs don"t want to apply for such jobs due to a pernicious culture of "it"s not my place". This sense of "not my place" is derived from an immense feeling of disenfranchisement with mainstream society since nobody in that field of work or education looks like you or has a similar background to you; nobody in that field can be related to you and thus you feel that you wouldn"t fit in or would be an "outsider" (not a nice feeling surprisingly). Sometimes this effect is not explicit and is a subconscious effect. Ethnic minorities in particular think about racism a lot more than the majority does and thus these feelings do genuinely occur to them very much. In this way, AA can provide inspiring role models thus motivating more people to bring about equality themselves but crucially AA is the all important trigger. Finally, AA simply artificially brings about more equality since it rebalances the bias that already exists in our society. If you have a company that has problems with implicit bias then using AA to force a certain amount of POCs into your workplace will guarantee that that implicit bias plays no effect in marginalising POCs. Thus this guarantees more equality. So, as we can see affirmative action DOES work in bringing about more equality. Since current inequality leads to so much injustice and societal problems I think it is completely justified to limit the "freedom" of a privileged few to discriminate against and dominate marginalised, and in many cases, oppressed groups. Sometimes, it takes the state of action to change the state of man. Affirmative action allows minorities to succeed in a world that is stacked against them and this is why AA is justified.