Essay, Research Paper: The Failures Of Affirmative Action

Thomas D Goslin III
Eng 114-55
Joranko & Robbins
Tuesday, October 31, 1996
The Failures of Affirmative Action
Once upon a time, there were two people who went to an interview for only one
job position at the same company. The first person attended a prestigious and highly
academic university, had years of work experience in the field and, in the mind of the
employer, 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 that
was visible in his opponent. Who was chosen for the job? you ask. Well, if the story
took place before 1964, the answer would be obvious. However, with the somewhat
recent adoption of the social policy known as affirmative action, the answer becomes
unclear.
After the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, it became
apparent that certain business traditions, such as seniority status and aptitude tests,
prevented total equality in employment. Then President, Lyndon B. Johnson, decided
something needed to be done to remedy these flaws. On September 24, 1965, he issued
Executive Order #11246 at Howard University that required federal contractors to take
affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed . . . without regard to their race,
creed, color, or national origin (Civil Rights). When Lyndon Banes Johnson signed that
order, he enacted one of the most discriminating pieces of legislature since the Jim Crow
Laws were passed.
Affirmative action was created in an effort to help minorities leap the
discriminative 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, and
racial tension was at its peak. Most of the corporate executive and managerial positions
were occupied by white males, who controlled the hiring and firing of employees. The
U.S. government, in 1965, believed that these employers were discriminating against
minorities and believed that there was no better time than the present to bring about
change.
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 employment
as reprieve for the previous two hundred years of suffering their race endured at the
hands of the white man. To many, this made sense. Supporters of affirmative action
asked, why not let the government help them get better jobs? After all, the white man
was responsible for their suffering. While this may all be true, there is another question to
be asked. Are we truly responsible for the years of persecution that the African
Americans were submitted to?
The answer to the question is yes and no. It is true that the white man is partly
responsible for the suppression of the African-American race. However, the individual
white male is not. It is just as unfair and suppressive to hold many white males
responsible for past persecution now as it was to discriminate against many
African-Americans in the generations before. Why should an honest, hard-working, open
minded, white male be suppressed, today, for past injustice? Affirmative action accepts
and condones the idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Do two wrongs make
a right? I think mother taught us better than that.
Affirmative action supporters make one large assumption when defending the
policy. They assume that minority groups want help. This, however, may not always be
the case. My experience with minorities has led me to believe that they fought to attain
equality, not special treatment. To them, the acceptance of special treatment is an
admittance of inferiority. They ask, Why can t I become successful on my own? Why
do I need laws to help me get a job? These African Americans want to be treated as
equals, 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 few
prejudiced individuals would affirmative action plans be reverse
discrimination. Only if today s society were operating fairly toward minorities
and women would measures that take race, sex, and national origin into account
be preferential treatment. Only if discrimination were securely placed in a
well-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 who
are not discriminating yet are being punished because of those who do. The Northern
Natural Gas Company of Omaha, Nebraska, was forced by the government to release
sixty-five white male workers to make room for minority employees in 1977 (Nebraska
Advisory Committee 40). Five major Omaha corporations reported that the number of
white 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 males
do to bring about their termination? The only crime that they were guilty of was being
white. This hardly seems fair to punish so many innocent men for the crimes of a
relative few.
But the injustice toward the white male doesn t end there. After the white male
has been fired, he has to go out and find a new job to support his family that depended on
the 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, require
more skills to get the same job that a lesser qualified black man needs. This is, for all
intents 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 extremely
discriminatory toward the executive, as well. The average business executive has one
goal in mind, and that is to maximize profits. To reach his goal, this executive would
naturally hire the most competent man or woman for the job, whether they be black or
white or any other race. Why would a business man intentionally cause his business to
lose money by hiring a poorly qualified worker? Most wouldn t. With this in mind, it
seems unnecessary to employ any policy that would cause him to do otherwise. But, that
is exactly what affirmative action does. It forces an employer, who needs to meet a quota
established 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 by
forcing them to create jobs for minorities. This occurs when a company does not meet its
quota with existing employees and has to find places to put minorities. These jobs are
often 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 work
place. It is also very powerful in education. Just as a white male employee needs more
credentials to get a job than his minority opponent, a white male student needs more or
better skills to get accepted at a prestigious university than a minority student. There are
complete 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 at
Berkeley. A 1995 report released by the university said that 9.7% of all accepted
applicants were African American. Only 0.8% of these African American students were
accepted by academic criteria alone. 36.8% of the accepted applicants were white. Of
these accepted white students, 47.9% were accepted on academic criteria alone. That
means that approximately sixty times more African Americans students were accepted
due to non-academic influences than white students. It seems hard to believe that
affirmative action wasn t one these outside influences.
Another interesting fact included in the 1995 report said that the average grade
point 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 with
a 1030 average SAT score. These stunning facts shows just how many competent, if not
gifted students fall between the cracks as a direct result of affirmative action (Affirmative
action).
Well, I believe that the problem has been identified; affirmative action is
becoming a form of reverse discrimination. It is now time for the doctor to prescribe a
potential remedy. Society should work towards broad based economic policies like
public investment, national health reform, an enlarged income tax credit, child support
assurance, and other policies benefiting families with young children. Widely supported
programs that promote the interests of both lower and middle class Americans that
deliver benefits to minorities and whites on the basis of their economic status, and not
their race or ethnicity, will do more to reduce minority poverty than the current, narrowly
based, poorly supported policies that single out minority groups. However, if this, or
another remedy is not taken sometime in the near future, and affirmative action continues
to separate minority groups from whites, we can be sure to see racial tension reach points
that 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.