Affirmative Action should be abolished

C1: Institutionalized discrimination. To better than understand what affirmative action is, we must see the definition of it. Affirmative Action: A policy where a institution favors a certain minority race over other races. Essentially, what does this mean? If a white male and a black male were competing for a job, the black male is automatically preferred over the white male, because he is the minority. This is discrimination. In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it outlawed any discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. When a government is putting a certain race over another, this is institutionalized discrimination. (1) Pro affirmative action supporters stress that Affirmative Action brings equal opportunity, but it is exactly the opposite. It’s not equal, when you make it a law to favor another race. Nobody should be judged on a criteria they have no control over. It simply is unfair. If a worker is to hire people for a job, it is pretty much common sense that they hire somebody who is best for the job, or they will lose profit. This is exactly why workplaces ask for interviews, references and resumes. By using race as a factor, employees are essentially forced to give a job to minority over somebody else, because of their race. An employer won’t be able to select the best employee, because his queue is narrowed down. Meritocracy is the best and only fair system that should be used. C2: No longer needed Affirmative Action was originally implemented by President John F Kennedy, as a way to help African Americans become more integrated into society as they have been brutally oppressed, with Jim Crow laws etc…At the time, it made sense. Blacks were very far behind compared to the white majority, so desperate measures were taken to help them. With Affirmative action, black have progressed. Here are stats I acquired from a source. “These programs have brought or accompanied significant gains for women and minorities. In the past 25 years, black participation in the work force has increased 50 percent and the percentage of blacks holding managerial positions has jumped fivefold. In 1970, women comprised only 5 percent of lawyers compared to 20 percent today. Twenty-five years ago, the student population at University of California, Berkeley, was 80 percent white compared to 45 percent today.” Yes, you can see that with Affirmative action has done it’s job, the % of minorities have increased, however the policy is being to be hypocritical to it’s original intention, which is to promote equality. This is why Affirmative Action is outdated. For a society to be truly color-blind, it should come naturally, rather than through enforcement. We are at a point in society, where racism is generally shunned upon by most people. C3: Encourages less effort. Affirmative Action essentially encourages people to strive for lower goals. For example, if the average white student needed to have a 95% average to be accepted into a school, a minority would only need 90% to be accepted. This essentially encourages less effort. In the mind of a minority, they would be more inclined to score less, because they can be accepted while scoring less. According to a study done by professors William Bowen and Derek Bot, Blacks who scored 1200 to 1249 on their SAT’s had a 60% chance of admission, while white’s who scored 1200 to 1249 on their SAT’s only had a 19% chance of being accepted. If blacks need to score very to little to being accepted, where is the incentive to succeed? Affirmative Action essentially is harming minorities by rewarding them for scores that should generally be a lot higher. This also creates a thought in the mind of some minorities, that they only were selected because of their race, not their effort. It also further harms them, because they are less prepared for their job later on. (2) C4: Creates racial tension Affirmative Action is bound to create racial tension between races. Races that have been shoved behind for minority groups due to their race, will soon began to see minorities as a threat, because their chance of entering the workforce could be in jeopardy. This does nothing to help ease the racial tension that is already prevalent in American society. If minorities are actually helped to perform at higher scores rather than being selected for their race, this will essentially force whites or other races to step their game up, to be competitive. This will create a better workforce for America. Blacks who get accepted can finally say they earned their job through hard work and effort, rather than being ridiculed for being accepted for their color, not their effort. C5: Harms minorities by making them unprepared for the job. Affirmative action creates a mismatch for minorities. In a study conducted by Richard Sanders, he did a study were he compared the scores of Black students, to white students in an unbiased study.. He figured that Forty-one point four percent of the first-year black students and 42.5 percent of the graduated students fell in the lowest tenth of their classes by GPA; at elite schools, the first-year figure was 51.6 percent. (3) In another research he conducted, he compared the bar exams of white students, and black students. 88 percent of white law school graduates passed the exam, however only 61.4 percent of black graduates did. This is basically the showing how Affirmative Action isn’t doing any justice to minorities, the difference between the number of blacks who passed, and the number of whites is nearly 27 percent different. Another study shows that 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. 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. Another study shown by the University of Michigan shows that, prior to the banning of Affirmative Action, “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”. Admitants who were black, essentially had ““Black admittees had substantially lower SAT scores, ACT scores, and high school GPAs compared to Asians and Whites. The range of Hispanic admitees’ test scores (SATs and ACTs) and high school GPAs fell between those for Blacks and those for Asians and Whites “(4) When these minorities go into the workforce, they likely will perform at a lower level that other races, because they are being rewarded for something that requires less effort for them. C6: Other minorities are affected Affirmative Action was originally imposed to help minorities, but the program itself is affecting minorities, and in some cases are assisting the majority itself. Affirmative action policies in the University of California have implemented policies that help white applicants who get admitted. Essentially, Asians will have to work a lot harder to be accepted, under these Affirmative Action policies. The common stereotype is that Asian-Americans generally are the “model minority’ and that most of them are high achieving. However, some Asian Races such as Cambodians, Hmong and Laotians still are struggling to enter the workforce, and only 14% of them have a bachelor’s degree. Essentially Affirmative Action is also making their condition worse, because colleges essentially are making the it harder for Asians to being admitted. (5) Sources:https://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.scu.edu...http://www.discoverthenetworks.org... http://www2.law.ucla.edu... Nagai, Althea K. “Racial and Ethnic Preferences in Undergraduate Admissions at the University of Michigan.” Center for Equal Opportunity. 2006. Web. 19 Oct. 2014 http://www.mochimag.com... https://www.americanprogress.org...