I wrote this for my Diversity class because we had to write a paper about affirmative action.
The Cons of Affirmative Action
In my opinion, affirmative action is an un-constitutional policy that violates the 14th Amendment. All people should have equal opportunity, and should be chosen for jobs and college admission on the basis of merit, not on the basis of race. It is racist to deny anyone a position just because of their race, whether they are white or black. The most qualified person should be accepted, whether they are white or black.
Affirmative action and government handouts only make people dependent on the government and its policies. Rather than striving to be successful on their own, they become addicted to government support. If blacks want to succeed in society, they should study hard and get good grades so they can be among the best qualified applicants. Affirmative action only keeps black behind. It treats them like they can’t help themselves and if left to themselves, they would be failures. It is racist to have these attitudes towards blacks. G-d made everyone with free will and the ability to be successful. They just have to make the right choices in life for this to happen. No one is biologically inferior. Anyone who says so is a racist. I believe anyone who strives to be successful, can be successful. Not believing this would mean not believing in free will.
Conservative black leaders have themselves made claims against affirmative action, noting how it does not help poor blacks succeed in life. The great Conservative black thinker, Thomas Sowell wrote an article on this subject entitled “The Grand Fraud: Affirmative Action for Blacks”. He makes some interesting points. He writes “No issue has been more saturated with dishonesty than the issue of racial quotas and preferences, which is now being examined by the Supreme Court of the United States. Many defenders of affirmative action are not even honest enough to admit that they are talking about quotas and preferences, even though everyone knows that that is what affirmative action amounts to in practice.” I believe he thinks that people are pretending that blacks are being chosen on the basis of merit while in reality, it is on the basis of race and the quota system.
Thomas Sowell believes that “despite all the gushing about the mystical benefits of "diversity" in higher education, a recent study by respected academic scholars found that ‘college diversity programs fail to raise standards’ and that ‘a majority of faculty members and administrators recognize this when speaking anonymously.’” He notes a study by Stanley Rothman, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Neil Nevitte, which found that "of those who think that preferences have some impact on academic standards those believing it negative exceed those believing it positive by 15 to 1." He motes that most faculty members and staff will be “opposed to double standards in college admissions yet professors who will come out publicly and say what they say privately in these polls are as rare as hen's teeth.”. He says that most arguments favoring affirmative action polices are “demonstrably false” and calls it the grand fraud of our time.
Sowell writes that “the need for ‘role models’ of the same race or sex is a key dogma behind affirmative action in hiring black or female professors”. He notes that a “recent study titled ‘Increasing Faculty Diversity’ found ‘no empirical evidence to support the belief that same-sex, same-ethnicity role models are any more effective than white male role models.’”. He also uses the same argument when dealing with the fact that there are those who claim that it is necessary for a mass amount of black students for black students to do well in a college environment. He believes the opposite is true. Proof of this is that the University of California and the University of Texas have more black students now than they did while they were using affirmative action in admissions. This helps the serious black students who are matched with other blacks students of the same academic standards as themselves. They will succeed better this way rather than grouping all the black students together. It is indeed racist to say all blacks are alike. They should be treated as individuals.
Before the beginning of affirmative action in the United States, blacks were moving out of poverty at a faster rate. Sowell writes that since “the decade of the 1970s -- the first affirmative action decade” there was “virtually no change in the poverty rate among blacks”. Sowell believes that blacks lifted themselves out of poverty on their own but the credit was hijacked “by Liberal politicians and black ‘leaders’”. He credits this to why whites characterize blacks as not being able to “life themselves out of poverty like other groups when that is in fact what most blacks have done.” He believes that affirmative action does nothing to help blacks in the ghetto and only helps wealthy black billionaires “who get preferences in government contracts”. These blacks don’t need affirmative action because they have “net worths of more than one million dollars.”
Thomas Sowell raises some great points. How are blacks going to raise themselves up in society if affirmative action polices in the long run are only helping people who are already rich? If it is intended to help poor blacks, it only makes them be reliant on these policies. The rich blacks don’t need these policies because they are already rich.
In concluding, Thomas Sowell says that “One of the big barriers to any rational discussion of affirmative action is that many of those who are for or against it are for or against the theory or the rationales behind group preferences and quotas. As for facts, the defenders simply lie.” I believe that the defenders may indeed be engaging in “modern racism.” They are pretending to like blacks in order to be “politically correct” but in reality, they hold private views against blacks. In order to sincerely help blacks succeed in life, their leaders starting at the community level need to educate them. I believe great leaders like Thomas Sowell and Alan Keyes should be their leaders rather than bigoted leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Louis Farakhan. The latter three complain of racism towards blacks while they themselves are racist against whites. They have repeatedly made racist comments against Jews, Greeks, and Italians. Making jokes at the expense of other races does not help a people raise themselves up. Instead, they should learn from the experiences of other groups who have succeeded in raising themselves up. Jews and Italians were hated by many Anglo-Saxons. But they simply raised themselves up in society and became successful people. I believe this is a good example that black leaders should follow. If they want to defeat racism and discrimination, they should work to improve themselves and their financial situation, thereby bringing an end to poverty which unfortunately strikes many blacks in this country. Only by improving one’s self can one succeed in society.
Bibliography
Sowell, Thomas, “The Grand Fraud: Affirmative Action for Blacks”. Capitalism Magazine:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2637 (April 1, 2003).
Topic: The Cons of Affirmative Action (Read 3493 times)