Affirmative Action
Damon Stevenson
ENG 101
Spangler
02 May 2013
Affirmative Action
Imagine for a second that its 2013 in the United States of America and you’ve been stripped of your current identity. Picture that in this day of age we still lived in a time where discrimination and inequality was a society norm and that you were thrust into a world that played on your vulnerabilities and crushed your dreams. For a moment we’d have to consider that people’s civil rights are being violated and that the poor and lower class are uneducated and are not given the same opportunities and tools to succeed as the upper class. We’d have to consider that the country’s top positions are only held for a certain group of people or a certain class of people with the others never getting a chance to experience that equality and pursuit of happiness that every American has either worked hard for or continue to work toward. Not too long ago embedded in the pages of our American history we can find that these problems played out in a society which was supposed to guarantee freedom and the pursuit of the American dream for all people. Instead racism and discrimination poured out into the streets and affected life for minorities and their way of living. Affirmative action has changed this, however, giving both women and minorities an advantage where previously they did not have one.
Affirmative action took its course and that nation by storm when it was implemented into policy as the law of the land. This new program policy was designed to protect the equal rights for minorities under the law and was developed to correct decades of discrimination and to give disadvantaged minorities a boost (Messerli 1). In today’s society many can agree that there was a great need for the radical policy back in the 1960’s and 70s concerning the equality of opportunity. However, today many people argue that in the time when America has finally elected its first black president such a policy is no longer
ENG 101
Spangler
02 May 2013
Affirmative Action
Imagine for a second that its 2013 in the United States of America and you’ve been stripped of your current identity. Picture that in this day of age we still lived in a time where discrimination and inequality was a society norm and that you were thrust into a world that played on your vulnerabilities and crushed your dreams. For a moment we’d have to consider that people’s civil rights are being violated and that the poor and lower class are uneducated and are not given the same opportunities and tools to succeed as the upper class. We’d have to consider that the country’s top positions are only held for a certain group of people or a certain class of people with the others never getting a chance to experience that equality and pursuit of happiness that every American has either worked hard for or continue to work toward. Not too long ago embedded in the pages of our American history we can find that these problems played out in a society which was supposed to guarantee freedom and the pursuit of the American dream for all people. Instead racism and discrimination poured out into the streets and affected life for minorities and their way of living. Affirmative action has changed this, however, giving both women and minorities an advantage where previously they did not have one.
Affirmative action took its course and that nation by storm when it was implemented into policy as the law of the land. This new program policy was designed to protect the equal rights for minorities under the law and was developed to correct decades of discrimination and to give disadvantaged minorities a boost (Messerli 1). In today’s society many can agree that there was a great need for the radical policy back in the 1960’s and 70s concerning the equality of opportunity. However, today many people argue that in the time when America has finally elected its first black president such a policy is no longer
Cited: Kluecel, James R., and Eliot R. Smith. "Affirmative Action Attitudes: Effects Of Self-Interest, Racial Affect, And Stratification Beliefs On Whites ' Views." Social Forces 61.3 (1983): Journal On Civil Liberties & Civil Rights 10.2 (2005): 165-188. Academic Search Premier