Affirmative Action to promote equal opportunity in the United States is justified

My partner and I stand in firm affirmation of the resolution Resolved: Affirmative action to promote equal opportunity in the United States is justified. We provide the following definitions for this debate: From the Cato Institute, "Affirmative action means taking positive steps to end discrimination, to prevent its recurrence, and to create new opportunities that were previously denied qualified minorities and women." According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, to "Justify" something means "To prove or show to be just; to vindicate; to maintain or defend as conformable to law, right, justice, propriety,or duty." Contention One: Affirmative Action is necessary to promote equal opportunity. According to Reginald Shuford, Senior Staff Attorney Racial Justice Program, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation,"Affirmative action is not, as opponents proclaim, preferential treatment that gives some people an unfair head start or advantage. Nor is it about quotas, which were outlawed in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Rather, at its core, affirmative action recognizes existing barriers to equal opportunity, like job bias and exclusion from business relationships, and seeks to expand opportunity by eliminating those barriers, thereby giving everyone a fair chance to compete." Additionally, "UCLA law Professor Jerry Kang said there needs to be affirmative action because discrimination is natural within humans. In an ideal world, humans would not make decisions based on race, so there would be no need for affirmative action, he said. But studies show that people still carry some stereotypes, called implicit bias, even though they openly declare that they do not, Kang said. He said experiments have shown discrimination does exist, even if only on a subconscious level, and that is why affirmative action is so necessary in California. Kang said there is "rampant discrimination," and affirmative action is a justified method for correcting this problem and leveling the playing field." (PRO 8) The innate tendency to discriminate is still a problem today, and as Shuford points out, "according to one study of over 1300 employers in Boston and Chicago, job applicants with "white-sounding" names are twice as likely to be called back for interviews as equally qualified applicants with "black-sounding" names...African-American women, moreover, earn only sixty-three cents per hour and Hispanic women only fifty-two cents per hour for every dollar a white man earns for similar employment. Given its well-documented effectiveness, affirmative action is an appropriate tool for combating these and other ongoing disparities." Somewhere in the case include: African-Americans still are making about 76 cents to every dollar a white man makes. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2006 Contention Two: Affirmative Action is beneficial to all Americans. Affirmative action has the most direct and immediate benefits for minorities and women, but the rest of the population benefits from Affirmative action as well. According to Lawrence Hanks, Associate Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, "anecdotal evidence suggests that in the decades prior to the institutionalization of affirmative action in the Academy, hiring, tenure and promotion standards were quite lax—resembling an "old boy's network." With the advent of affirmative action and the access of the academic market to candidates of both genders and diverse racial groups, came an institutionalization of specified—and therefore higher—standards hiring and tenure of faculty. Thus, affirmative action has not had a negative impact on standards; ironically, it has led to the creation of standards. Therefore, because of affirmative action, all candidates today (even those that directly benefit from affirmative action) meet higher standards for hiring and assigning tenure than existed in the pre-affirmative action period." Affirmative actions also serves the greater good by increasing diversity in educational institutions and workplaces. Harry Holzer, Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University, asserts that "Universities clearly believe they benefit from these policies. You may or may not buy the research on how diversity improves the quality of the classroom, but the universities themselves feel that their legitimacy is enhanced by reaching out to a much larger population and providing access to a greater range of students. And the business community seems to benefit. The demographics of the labor market are changing a lot in tight labor markets. Businesses are really strapped for ways to find talent in minority applicant pools, and affirmative action helps them do that."