Manuel Becerra's Affirmative Action: Positive Discrimination
1078 Words5 Pages
Manuel Becerra Affirmative Action
Date 3/7/15
Period 5
Affirmative action was thought to be what would help stop favoring whites over other races but it actually resulted in the opposite. Affirmative action is an action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination, especially in relation to employment or education; positive discrimination. This was used to help African Americans have equal opportunity. It did not only give them equal opportunity but gave them an unfair advantage. I think it was a good idea for there to be affirmative action, but I don't think it should have been used to the extreme that it was. That is why affirmative action is not fair. This is an extremely important…show more content… It is unfair because ethnicity shouldn't change you're view of a person. Another reason is because no one has control over what ethnic group they belong to. Not only is this wrong, but it is also unconstitutional because the fourteenth amendment states, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they…show more content… Lots of different things can be viewed as using affirmative action. An example of this is an office that is trying to hire lower-level workers, a large number of these people can be from minority groups or women. This can be seen as using affirmative action and this is not an unfair way to use it. Affirmative action was first started in the 1960s. An executive order by John F. Kennedy was issued in 1961. Affirmative action started to fall in the 1990s. It started to fall because it wasn't as necessary and it was also starting to be viewed as unconstitutional. It was being seen as a form of discrimination. An example of an unfair affirmative action case is Bakke v. Regents of the University of California. This was in 1973. In this case 5 African American men were applying to study medicine at the University of California. They were all extremely smart and good in school, but applying for medical school is competitive. All five were excepted but none would have been excepted only based on their grades. The were also excepted because they were black. They took the spot of 5 other better applicants of other races that had better grades and better test scores. One person who had