Affirmative Action in College Admissions
The history of the United States is saturated with vivid accounts of ethnic discrimination and segregation. Ever since the country’s birth, people whose ethnicity is seen to be in the minority, which includes Americans of Asian, African, and Latin descent, have been both viewed and treated as lesser than American people of European descent; this is evident in the history of slavery, suffrage, and employment discrimination. Though the Unites States has taken substantial steps toward alleviating this ingrained ethnic prejudice, and has passed justifying measures in order to remedy past transgressions against people of minority, still there remains a societal inequality between Americans of European descent …show more content…
As a result, affirmative action was implemented in college admissions, and was released in three phases. The first phase, “obligatory affirmative action” (Nichols, et al. 27), was the movement which began in the 1960s and publically considered the idea of permitting diverse students in college admissions. In 1978, the Supreme Court case of Regents of University of California v. Bakke finally established diversity in higher education as a compelling state interest which “justif[ied] the consideration of race in university admission” (27) and therefore enabled the beginnings of programs and initiatives in favor of affirmative action. In the second phrase, “voluntary affirmative action” (23), a number of policies supporting the idea of a diverse student body were passed in the 1980s to the late 1990s. One of the first notable examples of affirmative action in higher education occurred in 1991, when the University of West Florida initiated Project ACT. The eight-day program, which initially targeted African Americas, but later extended to include all minority individuals, was developed in order to assist underprivileged students of ethnic minority to develop skills in the critical areas of math, science, and English so that college graduation became a reasonable and attainable goal. In the late 1990s, Project ACT extended to develop the university’s Multicultural Support Services, where the efforts more actively continued to help prepare minority students of low socioeconomic status by enrolling them in college-and-career readiness courses (23-24). Soon following the institution and apparent success of these programs, California and Texas, along with several other states, began the process of implementing affirmative action into educational systems (Fu 420). Currently, the third phrase of “tempered
The history of the United States is saturated with vivid accounts of ethnic discrimination and segregation. Ever since the country’s birth, people whose ethnicity is seen to be in the minority, which includes Americans of Asian, African, and Latin descent, have been both viewed and treated as lesser than American people of European descent; this is evident in the history of slavery, suffrage, and employment discrimination. Though the Unites States has taken substantial steps toward alleviating this ingrained ethnic prejudice, and has passed justifying measures in order to remedy past transgressions against people of minority, still there remains a societal inequality between Americans of European descent …show more content…
As a result, affirmative action was implemented in college admissions, and was released in three phases. The first phase, “obligatory affirmative action” (Nichols, et al. 27), was the movement which began in the 1960s and publically considered the idea of permitting diverse students in college admissions. In 1978, the Supreme Court case of Regents of University of California v. Bakke finally established diversity in higher education as a compelling state interest which “justif[ied] the consideration of race in university admission” (27) and therefore enabled the beginnings of programs and initiatives in favor of affirmative action. In the second phrase, “voluntary affirmative action” (23), a number of policies supporting the idea of a diverse student body were passed in the 1980s to the late 1990s. One of the first notable examples of affirmative action in higher education occurred in 1991, when the University of West Florida initiated Project ACT. The eight-day program, which initially targeted African Americas, but later extended to include all minority individuals, was developed in order to assist underprivileged students of ethnic minority to develop skills in the critical areas of math, science, and English so that college graduation became a reasonable and attainable goal. In the late 1990s, Project ACT extended to develop the university’s Multicultural Support Services, where the efforts more actively continued to help prepare minority students of low socioeconomic status by enrolling them in college-and-career readiness courses (23-24). Soon following the institution and apparent success of these programs, California and Texas, along with several other states, began the process of implementing affirmative action into educational systems (Fu 420). Currently, the third phrase of “tempered