Abstract
The objective of this essay is to present a valid, well constructed argument in favor of Affirmative Action as advancing race equality, showing the pro sides of such an important tool of American society and government to show that all people are, indeed, equal.
Thus, being all of us equal, no matter what culture or race/ethnicity we belong to, Affirmative Action appeared to give to all the same chances in education, work, life and career opportunities.
Furthermore, its objective is to remove from society the remaining idea of some latent differences between cultures, promoting the creation of a prejudice-free population.
Keywords: equality, race, affirmative, action, culture, education, job, career, work, opportunity, prejudice.
Affirmative Action is related to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and President Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order of 1965 that made official to prohibit discrimination in employment situations, opening up the job opportunities that were once closed for people other than of white ethnicity, even though they would be qualified for them, and punishing the employers who would have such discriminatory behavior, either on job positions or salaries.
Yet, such discriminative behavior is still present nowadays; thus, the presence of such programs of affirmative action are important to make sure that the ethnical minorities do have a fighting chance to get the same education grade, the same job opportunities and chances to have a good, social productive life and career, such as the white majority has, without being kept behind because of prejudice and pre-conceptions about them. Because such things do exist in today’s society, it does not make sense to say that a strong sense of ethics and having intelligence is enough to accomplish the goals one pursues in life. It would be denying a common-sense truth about society and the value that affirmative action has as a provider and enabler of such opportunities to any person, regardless of their race.
People that are against the affirmative action programs might argue that it builds a system that is unfair and that gives preference, both on job opportunities and education access to those minorities over white people with high education, simply based on the ethnicity/race factor. But that is saying that these minorities are bonded to the sense of a lower education level per se, which is not true. That is a mirror of the pre-concepts and prejudice mentioned above. Affirmative action exists, once more, to break these habits.
It is known that public education shows lower score results than private institutions. It is also known that people belonging to these ethnical minorities often don’t have the ability to use these private educational tools to build their education background. Thus, affirmative action programs make sure that people from these minorities, who did have shown great effort and good records, are qualified for entering such institutions, taking in consideration not only scores, but also achievements, active roles in society, being possible good assets to have that can play bigger roles tomorrow, just like the majority.
On employment situations, affirmative action makes employers create fair ways of recruitment, by leaving out of the preferences, for candidates, features that would exclude people because of their gender, their first language or their education, being that such features would never be relevant for the job positions being regarded.
Affirmative action exists to fight inequality of race and sex and the exclusion that people might suffer. Thus, programs that are built for the integration of these minorities in educations institutions that would be closed for them before and in job opportunities, and also to bring benefits to education institutions and employers who show a greater ethnical range of students and staff. These benefits will benefit, equally, the people belong to such minorities and the people of the majority white ethnicity. So, this way, and contrary to what some state, it brings equality and advantages to everyone.
If being serious about building a society based on equality, affirmative action must exist: society agrees that there is discrimination, of gender and race. That is unanimous. Thus, to break such bases, these affirmative action programs must exist, to make entrance to any opportunity of growth for those who History has proven endlessly to be excluded from. This way, every man and woman has a role in society, being qualified for such role, independently of the rest. This is the aim.
People are still judged, because of gender or race, as more or less competent for a job, degree or career. Society still compartments fields as more fit to ones than others. Affirmative action exists to break those boundaries, to build an equal society, where everyone is the same and where every singularity of each person only contributes for the richness of knowledge, and thus success, of such society in every field.
Conclusion
Affirmative action was born when people wanted to end the severe racial and gender discrimination, integrating in the Constitution the rights of every human being as being equal, regardless.
Today’s society is still built on prejudice and pre-concepts about minorities or gender.
The affirmative action programs ensure that these building projects for an equal society continue to move one, by giving way to higher education levels to those of minorities that usually can’t have them, leveling up the wages between ethnicities; by opening job opportunities to everyone, encouraging employers to integrate minorities on their staff and making them give up on bias ways of recruitment, leveling the chances between people with the same qualifications for a position.
These are examples of how affirmative action really plays an important role of continuing to build a society that is really based on equality, where everyone has a role, not being compartmented to some of the choices because of gender or race.
Affirmative action aims to real equality and a real fair society.
References
American Civil Liberties Union of Florida (n.d). Affirmative Action. Raising Public Awareness. Retrieved from http://www.aclufl.org/take_action/download_resources/info_papers/17.cfm
Turner, Alex (2012). Affirmative Action Advances Racial Equality in Education. TCU 360, Student News Source at Texas Christian University. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/TCU%20360/affirmative-action-supreme-court_b_1469199.html
