Class-Based Affirmative Action

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President John F. Kennedy initially took Affirmative Action to ensure the equality for all races mainly for jobs and educational institutions. He did this through his Executive Order 10925, which is known as Affirmative Action. This policy asserts that in jobs and educational institutions, racial preferences will be used in their admissions process.While proponents of Affirmative Action claim that levels of diversity in college campuses increase with Affirmative Action, the reality is that many underrepresented minority students are being mismatched into the colleges and universities, ultimately leading them to a path of failure and because of this, there will be less underrepresented minorities (or URMs for the purpose of this) graduating …show more content…
Race-based Affirmative Action rather helps only a certain race of students-URMs, which then makes it unfair for some Whites and Asians to get into schools. Furthermore, bringing back the principle of equality that America is known for, ultimately getting rid of race-based Affirmative Action and implementing class-based Affirmative Action will help address the issue of equality. Therefore, class-based Affirmative Action seems to be the solution to when talking about bringing the level of equality since it will help all races when the issue is income. In Richard D. Kahlenberg’s essay, “The Race Versus Class Debate” he talks about the benefits of having class-based Affirmative Action over race-based Affirmative Action. He continues arguing …show more content…
The use of racial preference should not be implemented since it not only looks down at the minorities, they also establish a system that sets URMs up for failure in the long run. In Daniel Fisher’s article, “Poor Students Are The Real Victim of College Discrimination,” he argues that colleges should use class-preferences over race-based preferences. Fisher continues by claiming that in
“elite law schools like Yale and Harvard Law, 60% of the incoming students tend to come from the top 10% of the socioeconomic spectrum, Sander says, while only 5% come from bottom half. Similar studies of competitive undergraduate schools have shown that three-quarters of students come from the top economic quartile, while less than 10% come from the bottom half”

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