Let No Man Put Us Under Essay

, Research Paper

Justice for All This paper attempts to understand the rationale of anti Affirmative Action leader Ward Connerly and the detrimental effects ending the program will have on society. I. History of Affirmative ActionA. Modes of thoughtB. Language of the groupC. Inherited situation of ConnerlyD. Existence of social groupsE. Social groups thinking and acting with and against one anotherF. Groups change surrounding worldG. Change produces guiding thread II. Identifying the crisis and disorder of Ward Connerly Over the last thirty years, minorities have been given a better chance to succeed in America by way of Affirmative Action. Recently, there has been a surge of non-minority Americans claiming reverse racism. Affirmative Action is now being called “preferential treatment”. Created in 1965 by Executive Order 11246 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, it was designed to help minorities have a more equal opportunity in the world. The program was designed to recruit, motivate, and train individuals from a wide range of backgrounds for schools and jobs from which minorities had long been excluded and for which many lacked the necessary preparation. It is a program designed to help minorities and women get their feet off the ground after years of discrimination and oppression. It is believed that because of past unequal treatments, it is difficult for minorities and women to compete in the mainstream society with their male counterparts. A good quote by Eric Neisser sums up this idea, “If an athlete is tied up for weeks while her colleagues are practicing and, on the day of the meet, she is released and placed in the race, she would not be expected to win, much less compete as well as her competitors.” Affirmative Action not only tries to make jobs and schooling more accessible to these minority groups, it also tries to strengthen the motivation of these people, so they can actually believe that they can achieve something in life. However, non-minorities are starting to complain. A group of non-minority Americans in California claimed that they were being denied admittance to universities in the admitting process. This led to Ward Connerly, a member of University of California Regents, promoting the anti Affirmative Action message (NLSPAC, 1). Proposition 209 bans both discrimination and preferential treatment to various minorities on the basis of race, creed, sex, or place of origin (NLSPAC, 1). Connerly does not clearly structure his mode of thought. His understanding of reality is not real pertaining to minorities. The social context of Affirmative Action is its origin in the Civil Rights Movement. It was designed to give minorities and women special consideration for contracts, employment, and education (Froomkin, 2). Connerly is not a woman and he does not acknowledge the fact that he is African American, a minority. Connerly owns a consulting firm and only divulges his race when necessary, ” I felt that it could be damaging to my business to be identified as a minority firm,” he says (Pooley, 4). Connerly does not understand or cannot relate to other minorities about the struggles that minority’s face getting into corporate America. Since Connerly has already received his degree, owns his own business, and does not reveal his race for contracts, he does not understand what minorities who do not have these things go through. Therefore, his mode of thought is completely obscured and distorted. I consider Connerly’s group to be minorities. However, he cannot relate to his group because he does not speak the same language as his group. By language, I mean social attitude. Most minorities try to accept all of the help they can get. For instance, the government will defer a company’s capital gains taxes indefinitely if that company sells a cable system to a partnership controlled by a minority (Birnbaum, 1). There have been other programs like this one where minorities benefited. This too will end if Affirmative Action is ended. Connerly does not understand that minorities still need special privileges to be as successful as non-minorities. He does not realize how much minorities stand to lose. The meanings or opinions of a situation depend on which group you belong to in society. There are two different opinions to the same situation. One is held by minorities and the other by non-minorities. Connerly associates himself with the non-minorities. Connerly’s inherited situation changed twice during his childhood. When he was four, his mother died and he was taken in by his middle class uncle and aunt (Pooley, 3). At age twelve, he went to live with his grandmother who was in the lower class bracket. It was during this time that Connerly’s work ethic and also hate of his race began (Pooley, 3). He worked to help his grandmother and resented the fact he went to a lower income household. Connerly could not further his ways of knowing in his inherited situation because he disassociated himself from others in his race. This was due to struggles that he faced. Connerly’s struggle with nature is one of his biggest problems. It is a natural fact that he was born a black male in the late 1930’s in a lower class family. Civil Rights for African-Americans had not been established and he was considered an inferior citizen. Connerly wishes he could live in a colorblind society. Therefore, he could not be classified by something he wishes he were not. The struggle of an individual with another ind