Leveling the Playing Field, or Reversing Discrimination?

In its creation during the term of Lyndon B. Johnson, affirmative action was a designed program implemented with the hopes of ending racism and discrimination in this country. How was it intended that our nation carry out this goal? "By instituting a good faith effort by employees and employers to address past and/or present discrimination through a variety of specific, result-oriented procedures."(OAP) In theory this would appear as a logical approach to a problem which has plagued our nation for several years. However, was this the eventual outcome of this seemingly necessary step beyond equal opportunity statutes that simply ban discriminatory practices? Today there are groups that would argue for both sides of this issue. The purpose of this paper is to look at both stances, and see whether or not affirmative action has a place in our society today. Provided in this paper is evidence and claims made by both sides of the argument. After reviewing this evidence, I w!

ill attempt to make a claim as to what the correct outcome should be for this controversial topic.

At the undergraduate level, the denial of white

Affirmative action has had its greatest amount of success in city, state, and government jobs. Since the 1960's the area of law enforcement witnessed the greatest increase in minority applicants, and in jobs offered to minorities. This should be viewed as an extremely positive thing, because prior to affirmative action these jobs were almost completely closed off to minorities and women. This influx has been greatest in the area of government, state, and city, because this type of work is easier for affirmative action programs to watch over and regulate. However, despite these recent efforts to integrate city, state, and government jobs, there are still many instances where these programs have failed. One example of this took place on October 6, 1998 when over one thousand civil rights activists rallied to show their disapproval for the recent hiring of law clerks by the US Supreme Court. Of the thirty-four newly hired clerks, only one, a Hispanic, was a minority. In addi!

tion, since 1972, only three percent of the clerks hired have been minorities. "The fact that the nine justices who sit on the highest court in the land do not practice equal opportunity exposes a great deal of hypocrisy," stated Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP "By not hiring more people of color, the Supreme Court is reducing opportunities and increasing the pain index for minorities." (www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte) This is a prime example of what transpires when a system is not in place that combats discrimination, such as affirmative action.

Now that the negative aspects of affirmative action have been examined, the positive ones will now be addressed. As you already know affirmative action was implemented with the idea and hope that America would finally become truly equal. The tension of the 1960's civil rights movement had made it very clear that the nation's minority and female population were not receiving equal social and economic opportunity. The implementation of affirmative action was America's first honest attempt at solving a problem it had previously chosen to ignore.

nating affirmative action, UCLA was able to focus on the quality that should be considered first and foremost in the selection process, and that is performance. By examining the previous statistics, it is apparent that through the use of this program, white students were denied from UCLA, while less qualified minorities were accepted.

$51,300.(OAP) This figure more than qualifies those minorities' families as middle class households, thus showing that the deciding factor between those minorities who were approved and those non-minorities which were accepted is solely based upon race.

In addition to the information gathered from this undergraduate institution, there are much more alarming figures that are available from the country's graduate programs. For example, after the state of California passed a bill outlawing affi

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Approximate Word count = 1975
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)