Collin Rust
11/28/2017
Professor Smith
The Case for Reforming Affirmative Action
Since affirmative action was first fashioned up and implemented by President John F. Kennedy on March 6th 1961 through the use of an executive order, the program that was designed to help boost the role of historically wronged racial classes (Sander, 2013). This was originally seen by many scholars as an absolutely necessary measure in order to help bring together a nation that had been historically divided by race. The main group set to be helped by this bold policy was that of African Americans. However, today affirmative action serves as a discriminatory measure in and of itself (Sander, 2013). Today the groups of individuals who were originally supposed to …show more content…
In all fairness, the aim of providing preferential treatment to promising applicants who may not have had the same privileges and opportunities as other applicants is extremely noble in its intention (Liu, 2010). However, this begs the question as to how an admissions board is able to effectively gauge the degree to which any specific applicant has suffered from a lack of opportunity (Liu, 2010). It is impossible for any individual on an admissions board to effectively determine the extent of how racial discrimination has negatively affected the life of any individual applicant. Through the use of Affirmative Action procedures the only way these assumptions are gathered and inferred are on the basis of whether or not an applicant is a member of an underrepresented minority (Liu, 2010). African Americans and Hispanics have continually been underrepresented minorities when it comes to enrollment in higher education, while Asian Americans are overrepresented. Admissions boards know this and through the use of Affirmative Action practices simply take the fact that certain racial groups have lower numbers of applicants and give preferential treatment to members of that racial group in the application process in order to create a ratio of students more representative of the demographics of the country (Liu, 2010). The practice of blindingly accepting the notion that just because someone is from a less represented racial class is dangerous due to the fact that not everyone from that race has had the same experiences and this pushes the narrative that everyone from a racial group are treated the same by
11/28/2017
Professor Smith
The Case for Reforming Affirmative Action
Since affirmative action was first fashioned up and implemented by President John F. Kennedy on March 6th 1961 through the use of an executive order, the program that was designed to help boost the role of historically wronged racial classes (Sander, 2013). This was originally seen by many scholars as an absolutely necessary measure in order to help bring together a nation that had been historically divided by race. The main group set to be helped by this bold policy was that of African Americans. However, today affirmative action serves as a discriminatory measure in and of itself (Sander, 2013). Today the groups of individuals who were originally supposed to …show more content…
In all fairness, the aim of providing preferential treatment to promising applicants who may not have had the same privileges and opportunities as other applicants is extremely noble in its intention (Liu, 2010). However, this begs the question as to how an admissions board is able to effectively gauge the degree to which any specific applicant has suffered from a lack of opportunity (Liu, 2010). It is impossible for any individual on an admissions board to effectively determine the extent of how racial discrimination has negatively affected the life of any individual applicant. Through the use of Affirmative Action procedures the only way these assumptions are gathered and inferred are on the basis of whether or not an applicant is a member of an underrepresented minority (Liu, 2010). African Americans and Hispanics have continually been underrepresented minorities when it comes to enrollment in higher education, while Asian Americans are overrepresented. Admissions boards know this and through the use of Affirmative Action practices simply take the fact that certain racial groups have lower numbers of applicants and give preferential treatment to members of that racial group in the application process in order to create a ratio of students more representative of the demographics of the country (Liu, 2010). The practice of blindingly accepting the notion that just because someone is from a less represented racial class is dangerous due to the fact that not everyone from that race has had the same experiences and this pushes the narrative that everyone from a racial group are treated the same by