Toby Irenstein - Blog Post 3

Affirmative action creates opportunities in the work field and in schools for those who experience cultural discrimination, be it due to gender, race, or ethnicity. It is seen as a social justice, a way to compensate for discrimination that minorities are pinned against. Affirmative action creates a more diverse classroom or office, and brings about different perspectives and backgrounds. It provides minorities with opportunities that would most likely not be given to them otherwise. Affirmative actions ensures that civil rights laws are followed, and forces the responsibility of creating an equal student body or work force onto every institution. It paves the way for individuals of minority groups to prove themselves worthy of the treatment given to the majority. So why is it such a debated issue? Arguments against Affirmative action state that it creates reverse racism, the discrimination against members of a dominant group. By setting quotas for the amount of minority students or employees each institution is required to have, many members of the dominant group are not given the opportunity that they would have otherwise received. Affirmative action lessens the validity of when a member of a minority group gets accepted or hired, with many pinning it on the fact that the institution needed to fulfill their quota, not their qualifications. In many cases, protecting and promoting these minority groups is discriminating against the majority, making it so that two identical applications, one a white male and one a Hispanic female, will not be viewed with the same treatment. Additionally, Affirmative Action makes it more likely for companies to hire (or schools to accept) less-qualified workers/students, simply hiring in order to fill their statistical quotas. While many argue that these laws are to help compensate for past oppression to minority groups (such as slavery), The past cannot be changed and compensating people who were never hurt by it at the expense of people who have done them no harm presents moral issues. In my opinion, affirmative action does more harm than good, and in order to end racism, we must focus on individual capabilities instead of honing in on and continuing to change laws based off of racial and gender backgrounds.