Affirmative Action - The Process of Discrimination
Politics is assuming command of the American economy in the form of pervasive "equal opportunity" enforcement. In today's society, everyone is supposed to be equal and have equal rights, but in employment, there is more discrimination than ever. American citizens need to do away with affirmative action so that America's job opportunities can once again be based on merit, not skin color or ethnicity. Laws have been passed, quotas have been established, and seemingly, everything has been done to prevent discrimination, but rather than ending discrimination, these new laws and quotas have begun to discriminate against a new group of people-the qualified white male. America is known as the land of opportunity. The general theory is that if you work hard enough and you are the most qualified person to receive a job, you get it, but that is no longer the case. Now, in order to be employed, qualifications do not always matter as much as the color of a person's skin or his ethnicity.In dealing with this subject, the first question that is always asked is, "What is wrong with quotas? What is wrong with companies hiring a variety of blacks, Hispanics, women, and white males?" The problem is not with hiring a variety of people from diffe
Most people realize that quotas do hurt people, but what most people do not realize is that quotas are illegal. The 1964 and 1991 Civil Rights Acts explicitly banned government imposed quotas, but nevertheless, they immediately spread though the economy. Even though quotas are becoming more and more popular, there is incredible denial. Some say that affirmative action, while a regulatory burden, is not massive in scale. Supporters of affirmative action insist that the 1991 Civil Rights Act did not impose quotas, although its key point was to override a Supreme Court decision and make work force racial imbalance prima facie evidence of employer discrimination. Another way that quotas and affirmative action are very harmful is that they are very expensive. In 1991, the direct and indirect cost of quotas, of imposing them and complying with them, amounted to between 112 and 115 billion dollars. The "opportunity cost", which is what the economy might have achieved without the misallocative affect of quotas, amounted to at least 4% of the 1991 Gross National Product, an amount equal to the amount spent on public schools. The revelation of these figures is needed to show the dangers of a politically motivated employment policy. Karl Marx insisted that for any sort of class consciousness to arise, there must be com-munication of a common sense of oppression, but no one can feel this sense of oppression. With the mass media rarely recognizing quotas, much less portraying white males sympathetically, Peter Lynch, a sociological researcher, states "White males have been easily and silently victimized one by one." With neither conservatives nor liberals making affirmative action a "big deal," a classic spiral of silence has occurred whereby people assume that their doubts are not shared and suppress them, thus mutually intimidating each other. People are left feeling that nobody will help them. Another problem with this is the male psychology that "real men don't cry". Many men wo
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1339
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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