Affirmative Action Essay Research Paper As Nick

Affirmative Action Essay, Research Paper

As Nick Catoggio went to his mailbox, he knew that his acceptance letter from

Harvard University had arrived. Although Nick was nervous, he knew that his hard

work in high school had gained him admission into one of the world.s most

prestigious institutions of higher learning. Because of his grade point average

of 4.0 in high school, his numerous extracurricular activities, and a combined

score of 1440 on his SATs, Nick believed that he would almost be guaranteed

admission to Harvard. When he opened the letter however, he was shattered when

he read the words, .We regret to inform you .. He immediately called his

friend Richard Sahk, who had also applied, to tell him his news and to see if

Richard had received his letter from Harvard. Richard said, .Yeah Nick, I got

in!. Nick was astonished. Richard.s GPA was only 3.7, and he receive a

combined score of 1100 on his SATs. After a long pause he replied, .It.s

because I.m black, Nick,. Richard felt bad for his friend. Both he and Nick

had realized that he was accepted by Harvard because of his race. Nick was mad

because he was qualified and didn.t get in; Richard felt upset because he

wasn.t as qualified as Nick but was admitted because of his race. This is an

anecdotal example of one of the many criticisms of affirmative action. In fact,

the whole controversy over preferences based on race and gender has been debated

ever since the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. I believe that Affirmative

action should be discontinued, this program is a new kind of discrimination to

counter the past discrimination and this defeats the whole idea of the program.

Affirmative action is defined, as a program ensuring that a predetermined

proportion of jobs or college admissions go to African Americans and presumably,

other minorities and women as well (Woods 102). Also, James Q. Wilson in the

winter 1996 issue of The New Republic takes affirmative action to mean the

selecting of persons based on their group membership (23). Nicholas Lehman

writes that affirmative action today refers to " stuff that helps black

people." By this, he says that affirmative action today has come to mean

everything from "preferential college admissions to the way news is covered

to what’s hung in museums to corporate promotional practices" (84).

According to Nicholas Lehman, affirmative action started out as Executive Order

10925. Lyndon Johnson, the incoming vice President asked Hobart Taylor Jr., the

lawyer son of one of his friends, to work on a draft of an executive order that

would ban discriminatory hiring by Federal contractors. Taylor later said that

he "was searching for something that would give a sense of positiveness to

performance under executive order, and I was torn between the words ‘positive

action’ and the words ‘affirmative action.. . . . And I took ‘affirmative

action’ because it was alliterative" (40). Even during Johnson’s proposal

of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the issue of racial quotas was controversial.

Said then-Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, "… I know what will

happen if the bill is passed. I know what will happen if there is a choice

between hiring a white man or hiring a Negro both having equal qualifications. I

know who will get the job. It will not be the white man" (Lehman 40). The

people who seek to abolish affirmative action claim that more qualified students

are being displaced by less-qualified students. But there are no more or less

qualified students, only students who can benefit from attending a university

such as Michigan get a chance, and no one knows in advance who they are. The

opinions that accompany the various Supreme Court cases concerning affirmative

action have been perplexing, and, at times, contradictory. Woods Geraldine

referred to the opinions of the justices as pieces of a puzzle that no one,

including the court itself, knows how to solve completely (65). This confusion

is probably the result of disagreement among the justices. Many of the cases

involving affirmative action have been decided by very close votes. Even when

the justices vote the same way, their separate opinions often explain what they

agreed for entirely different reasons. Let.s take the example of the case,

.The Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.. On October 12, 1977,

the Supreme Court was scheduled to hear case no.76-811. Both proponents and

opponents of affirmative action waited to hear arguments about whether a white

male, Allan Bakke, should be admitted to medical school at U.C. Davis. On the

application form, Bakke noticed that there was an item that stated,

"Applicants for economically and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds

are evaluated by a special subcommittee of the admissions committee. If you wish

your application to be

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