August Tournament - United States should ban Affirmative Action

morcos, and the organizer of the tournament, 1harderthanyouthink. In this debate, I will be arguing for the abolishment of affirmative action (AA). I will explain why the A. A. system is no longer needed. Argument 1: An Outdated System A. A. is not only a flawed system, but an outdated one. In the early 1960’s John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson sought to stop discrimination and improve the lives of impoverished African Americans, and other minority groups. While this may have been needed at the time, significant improvements have been made in eliminating discrimination from our society. Among those improvements are; “The percentage of women in the law profession has gone from 5 percent to 20 percent since 1970,” black participation in the workforce is up 50% since 1970, 5x as many African Americans now hold managerial posts, “[b]lack college completion rate as a percentage of the white rate has improved from 42% then to 62% now," 9/10s of African Americans hold high school diplomas, a greater proportion of blacks now vote in national elections than whites, the life expectancy gap between blacks and whites has narrowed from 7 to 4 years, black households earn a greater percentage of what white households earn than they did in 1967, and the gap between the number of blacks and whites below the poverty line has narrowed by about 5 percent since 1967. ” (1, 2) This system is no longer needed because while it is still standing, it represents a colorized America, and racial inequities, which is detrimental to society. Progress in integration has been made; but it is questionable how much more A. A. can still do in this area, and whether the harms outweigh the benefits. Argument 2: Reverse Discrimination More often than not, A. A. creates unjustified forms of reverse discrimination. A. Employment. Corporate America has affirmative action programs designed to assist members of historically disadvantaged groups (3). One applicant who does not fit in with this category might have great qualifications and amazing potential, but he might lose it to a person that falls within one of these categories because they are simply needed to fill the spots on paper. This creates reverse discrimination, or a favoring of discriminated-against-in-the-pass minority groups. It is the opposite of what Affirmative Action is trying to create, equal opportunity. B. Education. A. A. laws have had unpredicted ramifications on the selections and admissions process in colleges. "In 2009, Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade and researcher Alexandria Walton Radford, in their book, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal, examined data on students applying to college in 1997 and calculated that Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of being accepted at a top private university as whites who scored 1410 and African Americans who got 1100. .. after controlling for grades, test scores, family background (legacy status), and athletic status (whether or not the student was a recruited athlete), Espenshade and Radford found that whites were three times, Hispanics six times, and blacks more than 15 times as likely to be accepted at a US university as Asian Americans. " (4) This is an example of reverse discrimination; colleges are favoring the underrepresented groups over the majority, which contradicts the laws themselves. Additional evidence supports these conclusions: “preceding Michigan’s statewide ban, the University of Michigan admitted 92% of Black applicants and 88% of Hispanic applicants who possessed a 3.2 GPA and a 1240 SAT score while only 10% of White applicants with similar scores were admitted. Additionally, Althea K. Nagai in her paper, 'Racial and Ethnic Preferences in Undergraduate Admissions at the University of Michigan,' found in a study that focused on the years: 1999, 2003, 2004, and 2005 (all of which preceded the statewide ban on affirmative action), that in all the years examined, 'Black admittees had substantially lower SAT scores, ACT scores, and high school GPAs compared to Asians and Whites. The range of Hispanic admittees’ test scores (SATs and ACTs) and high school GPAs fell between those for Blacks and those for Asians and Whites. '" (5) Argument 3: Meritocracy A. Harms the System/Unfair A. A. was designed to allow equal opportunity in not only in the workforce, but on the collegiate level as well. College admissions, and recruitment in the workforce, are based upon the meritocratic system, which subsequently based upon the ability and talents of an individual. Being accepted into a college is a privilege, and those who get accepted worked hard to get there. This system loses its entire legitimacy because people of different racial backgrounds are getting in based not on their ability and talent, but because of their racial origins. That is unfair; people deserve to succeed or fail not based on heavily sensitized traits like race, but because of their ability to succeed or do that job. It is wrong to reward people who are less qualified or who put in less time and work over those who are truly deserving. Based upon my evidence from Argument 2, A. A. is effectively a major advantage in the admissions of minority groups. Therefore, meritocracy is being overthrown and delegitimized by faulty A. A. laws. B. Encourages Laziness. People ride the coattails of affirmative action to the top, and don’t put in the work themselves. “Preferential treatment programs encourage dependency and reward people for identifying themselves as victims providing them no incentives to become self-reliant or to develop the skills necessary to succeed in the workplace or classroom. ” (1) Argument 4: Perpetuating Stigma and Racial Thinking Affirmative action reinforces racial stereotyping and stigmatizes minority groups. It actually makes it seem as if their success was not because of their accomplishments, but rather an insider bias. “[P]referential treatment programs harm minorities and women by stigmatizing them and devaluing their achievements. They encourage the belief that all minorities and women gain entry to jobs or universities primarily because they are members of underrepresented groups and not because they are qualified. Minority individuals may question whether the rules were bent in their case, leading to feelings of inferiority, self-doubt, and incompetence. .. Finally, preferential treatment will spur claims from all groups who feel they have been victims of injustice. ” (1) Argument 5: Beneficiaries’ Success The following research shows that minority groups that get accepted into colleges or hired for the job with less qualifications or scores, they are more ill-equipped to do that job, which results in less amounts of success. Affirmative Action laws effectively backfire and produce people that are unable to do well in their jobs or at school. "Data from one selective California law school from 2005 show that students who received large preferences were 10 times as likely to fail the California bar as students who received no preference. After the passage of Proposition 209, which limited the use of racial preferences at California's public universities, in-state bar passage rates for blacks and Latinos went up relative to out-of-state bar passage rates. To the extent that students of color moved from UC schools to less elite ones (as seems likely), the post-209 experience is consistent with the mismatch theory. .. In general, research shows that 50% of black law students end up in the bottom 10th of their class, and that they are more than twice as likely to drop out as white students. Only one in three black students who start law school graduate and pass the bar on their first attempt; most never become lawyers. ” (6) Argument 6: Beast of Burden This evidence supports the claim that if we wanted to fairly apply A. A. , we would need to give every group that had been historically discriminated against Affirmative Action, including but not limited to: Catholics, LGBT people, the Irish, etc. “[P]referential treatment will spur claims from all groups who feel they have been victims of injustice. And members of groups excluded by preferential treatment programs today will demand tomorrow to be compensated for opportunities denied them. Already the nation is witnessing a barrage of allegations and lawsuits filed by non-minorities charging employers and universities with reverse discrimination. " (1) If this were to be put in effect, one can only imagine the stress put on the public and private sectors, having to deal with the increased litigation surrounding the topic. Also, it would be hard to navigate a complex hiring system full of A. A. measures, and could make it difficult to sustain A. A. If A. A. isn’t applied to every such group, it is inherently unfair. Conclusion I am presenting this case because I believe Affirmative Action is a faulty system and needs to be abolished. Once again, thank you to my opponent and organizer of the tournament, and I wish you luck @salam. morcos. Vote Pro! Sources 1) . http://www.scu.edu... 2) . http://www.pewsocialtrends.org... 3) . http://www.employmentlawfirms.com... 4) . https://en.wikipedia.org... 5) . http://theapollonianrevolt.com... 6) . http://articles.latimes.com...