Friday, November 30, 2012

Affirmative Action


            We have talked about affirmative action numerous times in class, but we talked about it in the most depth on Wednesday. I think affirmative action is just, and I think that Sandel points out three good arguments that support affirmative action: correcting for the testing gap, correcting past wrongs, and promoting diversity. The first argument I think in some ways avoids a larger problem, which is the state of the education system. As for compensating for pas wrongs, I personally think that it is less about compensating for things like slavery directly but more about how we as a society view people as a result of it and because I think that is something we can’t exactly control, I think we have some responsibility to try to correct it. I think that the third argument is something that most people can agree with, a classroom isn’t the same with any majority of people, or as we talked about in class, a whole group is not represented. Affirmative action helps to not only diversify classrooms, but as we saw with the University of Texas Law School case, it helps to diversify a profession as well.
            Though those are all good arguments for affirmative action, is affirmative action achieving its goal? As Dr. J pointed out on Wednesday, more women attend college than men (there are also more women in the US) so why does that not reflect in the business, or the political world? Despite affirmative action why are there still so few minorities in big positions? Is affirmative action helping to only correct the testing gap, compensating for past wrongs, and to diversify the classroom, is it helping society any? Do you think affirmative action is supposed to do anything more? What do you think?

1 comment:

  1. I think that affirmative action achieves part of its goal. In essence the goal is to prevent discrimination against employees or applicants on the basis of color, religion, sex, or national origin. It is also, essentially, an attempt to rectify the wrongs of the past. In response to why there are so few minorities in positions of power: I think it is due to the fact that just because there are quotas for the employment of minorities that does not make it a requirement for them to be put in positions of power. Affirmative action provides for the opportunity of success, not the guarantee.

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