Affirmative Action

               Affirmative action comes in a few different forms. The most basic creates an even playing field for all ethnicities and genders by offering training programs for the less privileged. Another form is to give preference to minorities when hiring. This could come in a tie breaker, where both applicants are equally qualified, or more radical cases where a less qualified minority would get the position. Lastly is the quota system, which is outdated and rarely ever used. This system required that a certain amount of different races were hired, regardless of quality. This method not only ignores the problem, but gives the illusion of solving it so that it can be easily ignored.

I believe there is a need for affirmative action. The problem isn’t that there aren’t minorities in certain careers, the problem is that minorities can be underprivileged and do not have the means to reach the same goals. We live in a society that believes that if you work hard enough you can achieve anything and that simply isn’t true. This is an extremely harmful way of thinking because now any person who is impoverished is just ‘lazy.’ I believe that preparing the underprivileged to help them find work is a great idea. I even think that a tie-breaker is good too. It won’t solve the problem, but it could help for now. What we really need is equal education. State testing results often affect the funding that school receives. The schools with lower scores get less funding. This tactic only hurts children who were hurting in the first place. If we take priority in bringing everyone to the same educational level, maybe we could start to see less of a need for affirmative action.  Many think that affirmative action should apply to social class instead of race or gender, and that is a good idea but it should be in conjunction with what is already in place. But if a majority of blacks or Hispanics fall into the under-employed category, we should recognize a problem there.