Michael Kwan - Blog Post 3

Affirmative Action Creates Reverse Racism

Affirmative action was first coined when John F. Kennedy signed an executive order stating that workers should be hired and treated equally regardless of race, ethnicity, or culture. Reverse racism is the idea of racism against the white population. It is a commonly held belief that the white peoples represented the upper class and the minorities represented the lower class. However, Affirmative Action was claimed to created reverse racism because if gives the minority a greater chance of getting accepted than their white counterparts given that their credentials were the same.

Despite that the two terms seem to be the same, in today’s circumstances, affirmative action is very different from reverse racism because affirmative action was made to help the poor, who are at a disadvantage since birth. This means that they have to live in worse neighborhoods, where education isn’t as emphasized and parents or guardians have a harder time raising their children because they are usually part of the working class. This happens to be the minority, so they need a bonus advantage to be able to compete with white people, who are born with an advantage. Quotas are also a point that is brought up on several occasions. It says that you need a certain number or percentage of minorities at an institution or company to be diverse, and there have been complaints that minorities are held to a lower standard because a certain number of them have to be hired. I do not like the idea of quotas either, and this is no longer the case for several places now.

So, if a black student and a white student were to be able to achieve the same, the black student would be accepted over the white student because of the plethora of challenges that the black student would have needed to overcome to succeed. Affirmative action will help the disadvantaged, so if the minority will start to do well, then this will no longer have to be used because the playing field will be leveled. It is also not reverse racism because it is not against white people, rather it is against privileged people and in favor of the people that need help.