Affirmative Action

Why am I talking about affirmative action? Actually, let me clarify, I'm talking about affirmative action in the United States. Perhaps it's a familiar term, or maybe the concept is a big question mark to you. I decided to be an idiot and choose the processes and ideas of affirmative action as a persuasive essay topic for my rhetoric class. Let me add to that... I have to read this, meaning, it's going to be a speech.

So what is affirmative action? All in all it's a type of policy that serves to benefit minority groups - and women at one point - improve their chances with higher education opportunities, employment, etc. Now has this concept been a positive impact on American culture or not? That is what I decided to explore.

My stance was fairly neutral until I realized that affirmative action, which its purpose to begin with was to eliminate discrimination and racial profiling, has become discrimination in its own way. Here's what I found while I was digging through the web via multiple Google searches:

By far, African Americans benefit the most from the affirmative action system, especially in higher education opportunities. Not far behind is the Hispanic population. And here's another major population in modern day U.S.A.: Asian Americans. Laugh at this if you want, but the Asian minority group in the United States is in the same boat as middle-class Whites. So what am I saying? Straight to the point, affirmative action has been screwing the middle-class Whites and Asians in the United States, giving way to other minority groups first.

And why is this so? We come back to discrimination in affirmative action itself. Think of stereotypes. I will not mention any, but many are obvious if you compare the races. With equal economic backgrounds, an African American scoring a 1500 out of 1600 on the SAT will have a far better chance in attending the most prestigious schools than an Asian American who scored the same. With affirmative action, if the college-bound student was female, chances of obtaining scholarships for such prestigious schools will also be higher.

Let's use the example to emphasize my point. It's an event called the Affirmative Action Bake Sale. Sounds hilarious? Well, the event is hosted by student groups on college campuses throughout the United States, including many UC campuses like Berkeley and UCLA, Columbia University, Cornell, NYU, Northwestern, UNCC, Rutgers, and others. It's pretty much a student protest, criticizing the faults of affirmative action.

An example of such an event will be the student group selling cupcakes. The pricing per cupcake will be as followed:

• $1.00 for White and Asian males
• $0.75 for White and Asian females
• $0.50 for Black, Hispanic, and Native American males
• $0.25 for Black, Hispanic, and Native American females

The point these students try to get across is not the actual racial profiling, but the way that affirmative action systems ultimately categorize the races. Although these demonstrations tend to end up being reported for blatant racism, I would assume such a reaction would be expected by the student protestors. Sadly, I agree that this may be the case for many educational and employment opportunities across the nation. Of course, it may not apply to everyone, but it's certainly not completely inconspicuous.

When Presidents J.F.K. and then Lyndon B. Johnson first fully carried out the policies, the purpose was to back up the African American population... due to their treacherous civil rights journey through history. Was it supposed to be some form of atonement? Sorry the nation mistreated you for nearly two centuries? Sorry freedom and rights never applied to you until the Emancipation Proclamation? Fourteenth and fifteenth amendments? I don't even think Martin Luther King had that sort of change in mind with his "I Have a Dream" speech. It's ridiculous. What about the Chinese Exclusion Act? The Japanese internment camps during World War II?

We got screwed.