Essay, Research Paper: Failures Of Affirmative Action

Failures of Affirmative ActionOnce upon a time, there were two people who went to an interview for only onejob position at the same company. The first person attended a prestigious and highlyacademic university, had years of work experience in the field and, in the mind of theemployer, had the potential to make a positive impact on the company s performance.The second person was just starting out in the field and seemed to lack the ambition thatwas visible in his opponent. Who was chosen for the job? you ask. Well, if the storytook place before 1964, the answer would be obvious. However, with the somewhatrecent adoption of the social policy known as affirmative action, the answer becomesunclear. After the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, it becameapparent that certain business traditions, such as seniority status and aptitude tests,prevented total equality in employment. Then President, Lyndon B. Johnson, decidedsomething needed to be done to remedy these flaws. On September 24, 1965, he issuedExecutive Order #11246 at Howard University that required federal contractors to takeaffirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed . . . without regard to their race,creed, color, or national origin (Civil Rights). When Lyndon Banes Johnson signed thatorder, he enacted one of the most discriminating pieces of legislature since the Jim CrowLaws were passed. Affirmative action was created in an effort to help minorities leap thediscriminative barriers that were ever so present when the bill was first enacted, in 1965. At this time, the country was in the wake of nationwide civil-rights demonstrations, andracial tension was at its peak. Most of the corporate executive and managerial positionswere occupied by white males, who controlled the hiring and firing of employees. TheU.S. government, in 1965, believed that these employers were discriminating againstminorities and believed that there was no better time than the present to bring aboutchange. When the Civil Rights Law passed, minorities, especially African-Americans,believed that they should receive retribution for the years of discrimination they endured.The government responded by passing laws to aide them in attaining better employmentas reprieve for the previous two hundred years of suffering their race endured at thehands of the white man. To many, this made sense. Supporters of affirmative actionasked, why not let the government help them get better jobs? After all, the white manwas responsible for their suffering. While this may all be true, there is another question tobe asked. Are we truly responsible for the years of persecution that the AfricanAmericans were submitted to?The answer to the question is yes and no. It is true that the white man is partlyresponsible for the suppression of the African-American race. However, the individualwhite male is not. It is just as unfair and suppressive to hold many white malesresponsible for past persecution now as it was to discriminate against manyAfrican-Americans in the generations before. Why should an honest, hard-working, openminded, white male be suppressed, today, for past injustice? Affirmative action acceptsand condones the idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Do two wrongs makea right? I think mother taught us better than that. Affirmative action supporters make one large assumption when defending thepolicy. They assume that minority groups want help. This, however, may not always bethe case. My experience with minorities has led me to believe that they fought to attainequality, not special treatment. To them, the acceptance of special treatment is anadmittance of inferiority. They ask, Why can t I become successful on my own? Whydo I need laws to help me get a job? These African Americans want to be treated asequals, not as incompetents. In a statement released in 1981 by the United States Commission on Civil Rights,Jack P. Hartog, who directed the project, said:Only if discrimination were nothing more than the misguided acts of a fewprejudiced individuals would affirmative action plans be reversediscrimination. Only if today s society were operating fairly toward minoritiesand women would measures that take race, sex, and national origin into accountbe preferential treatment. Only if discrimination were securely placed in awell-distant past would affirmative action be an unneeded and drastic remedy. What the commission failed to realize was that there are thousands of white males whoare not discriminating yet are being punished because of those who do. The NorthernNatural Gas Company of Omaha, Nebraska, was forced by the government to releasesixty-five white male workers to make room for minority employees in 1977 (NebraskaAdvisory Committee 40). Five major Omaha corporations reported that the number ofwhite managers fell 25% in 1969 due to restrictions put on them when affirmative action
























was adopted (Nebraska Advisory Committee 27). You ask, What did these white malesdo to bring about their termination? The only crime that they were guilty of was beingwhite. This hardly seems fair to punish so many innocent men for the crimes of arelative few. But the injustice toward the white male doesn t end there. After the white malehas been fired, he has to go out and find a new job to support his family that depended onthe company to provide health care and a retirement plan in return for years of hard work.Now, because of affirmative action, this white male, and the thousands like him, requiremore skills to get the same job that a lesser qualified black man needs. This is, for allintents and purposes, discrimination, and it is a law that our government strictly enforces. Affirmative action is not only unfair for the working man, it is extremelydiscriminatory toward the executive, as well. The average business executive has onegoal in mind, and that is to maximize profits. To reach his goal, this executive wouldnaturally hire the most competent man or woman for the job, whether they be black orwhite or any other race. Why would a business man intentionally cause his business tolose money by hiring a poorly qualified worker? Most wouldn t. With this in mind, itseems unnecessary to employ any policy that would cause him to do otherwise. But, thatis exactly what affirmative action does. It forces an employer, who needs to meet a quotaestablished by the government, to hire the minority, no matter who is more qualified. Another way that affirmative action deducts from a company s profits is byforcing them to create jobs for minorities. This occurs when a company does not meet itsquota with existing employees and has to find places to put minorities. These jobs areoften unnecessary, and force a company to pay for workers that they do not need. Now, don t get the impression that affirmative action is only present in the workplace. It is also very powerful in education. Just as a white male employee needs morecredentials to get a job than his minority opponent, a white male student needs more orbetter skills to get accepted at a prestigious university than a minority student. There arecomplete sections on college applications dedicated to race and ethnic background.Colleges must now have a completely diverse student body, even if that means some,more qualified students, must be turned away.A perfect example of this can be found at the University of California atBerkeley. A 1995 report released by the university said that 9.7% of all acceptedapplicants were African American. Only 0.8% of these African American students wereaccepted by academic criteria alone. 36.8% of the accepted applicants were white. Ofthese accepted white students, 47.9% were accepted on academic criteria alone. Thatmeans that approximately sixty times more African Americans students were accepteddue to non-academic influences than white students. It seems hard to believe thataffirmative action wasn t one these outside influences. Another interesting fact included in the 1995 report said that the average gradepoint average for a rejected white student was 3.66 with an average SAT score of 1142.The average grade point average for an accepted African American student was 3.66 witha 1030 average SAT score. These stunning facts shows just how many competent, if notgifted students fall between the cracks as a direct result of affirmative action (Affirmativeaction). Well, I believe that the problem has been identified; affirmative action isbecoming a form of reverse discrimination. It is now time for the doctor to prescribe apotential remedy. Society should work towards broad based economic policies likepublic investment, national health reform, an enlarged income tax credit, child supportassurance, and other policies benefiting families with young children. Widely supportedprograms that promote the interests of both lower and middle class Americans thatdeliver benefits to minorities and whites on the basis of their economic status, and nottheir race or ethnicity, will do more to reduce minority poverty than the current, narrowlybased, poorly supported policies that single out minority groups. However, if this, oranother remedy is not taken sometime in the near future, and affirmative action continuesto separate minority groups from whites, we can be sure to see racial tension reach pointsthat our history has never seen. Works Cited Affirmative Action at the University of California at Berkeley Online. October 28, 1996. http://pwa.acusd.edu/ e_cook/ucb-95.html Civil Rights Compton s Interactive Encyclopedia. (1996). [Computer Program]SoftKey Multimedia International Corporation.United States. Commission on Civil Rights. Affirmative Action in the 1980 s: Dismantling the Process of Discrimination. Washington: 1981. United States. Nebraska Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Private Sector Affirmative Action: Omaha. Washington: 1979.