Poverty Who Are The Real Poor

Essay, Research Paper

We have seen in the United States that there have been many groups who have been in one way or form discriminated against. The very people who framed the Constitution of the United States are the same people who wrote the laws that discriminate against large segments of the population. The majority of these individuals were white males who literally held the power. This created a cultural dynamic of white superiority. A patriarchal society became the norm which existed for decades. An example of this is evidenced within the following scenario: if a woman did something wrong it was a direct reflection on her husband and he was legally able to punish her for it. The

constitution in theory presents equality for all but in practice it is privilege and equality for the few. This contradicts what we are tought in school concerning our revolution being are pulsion against being subjugated by the British Empire. We earned independence and freedom as a nation only to have the bounty grabbed and held by a select elite. This is and has been our social reality over the past two-hundred and twenty years.

Affirmative action is intended to be a direct response to the above described social inequity. Affirmative action is supposed to create equal opportunity for oppressed people. Equal opportunity is the intended outcome of affirmative action: Legislative policies are the objectives utilized to reach this goal. Affirmative action consists specifically of five major aspects: open search, punitive, minority compensation, backward compensation, forward preferential (Satris, 1999, 307). The above description

lays out what affirmative action is conceptually supposed to do. Does affirmative action accomplish the task of creating opportunity for those historically discriminated against; my view is that it does not help out oppressed people. What affirmative action does is hinder the advancement of minority groups.

First we can look at affirmative action policies. In the 1960 s virtually all the departments of nursing, medical, Pharmacy, and dentistry were white. With the exception of the school of nursing, they were mostly all males (In Motion 1999,). From the early 1960 s till today many professions have been dominated by males, especially white males. Affirmative action policies would help to introduce new groups of people into professions dominated by males. With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, some administrators made a commitment to integrate our public universities. They adopted a gradual, modest means to achieve a color blind society — Affirmative action (in motion

1999). However, some resisted affirmative action; Many of those who opposed the Civil Rights Act before it passed became opponents of affirmative action, the very means by which integration could be achieved in the 70 s(In motion, 1999). This was the beginning of many years of social policies which are aimed at helping out disadvantaged groups.

At a recent anti-affirmative action press conference, Governor Wilson of California said Everybody should play by the same rules. California should return to a public system based on merit, not preference (NY Times, 2000). So again we see that there are many people striking down the idea that groups who have been disadvantaged in the past should be boosted by legislative policies. We see this especially in the court case Bakke Vs The University of California At Regent. The Supreme Court held that a white applicant to the university medical school has been unconstitutionally rejected because of

preference given to minority students(Murphy). The case was one in a five to four victory:

it also held that numerical quotas for admissions of minorities to a medical school was

unconstitutional as an explicit racial classification, but the use of race as one of many criteria is more than constitutionally acceptable( Murphy1998, 128-129). The idea of giving anyone an advantage in society seems to contradict the basis of what this country stands for: individual and equal opportunity through personal talent and initiative.

The very phrase “reverse racism” contains the argument in exactly the form to which many have objected: in this country whites once set themselves apart from blacks and claimed privileges for themselves while denying them to others(in-motion1999). Now, on the basis of race, some feel that blacks are claiming special status and reserving for themselves privileges that have been denied to them in the past. To make that distinction is to twist history and forget the terrible plight of African-Americans in more than two hundred years of this country’s existence (In- motion1999). Affirmative action gives preferential treatment to disadvantaged minorities as part of a plan to achieve social equality this is no different from the policies that created the disadvantages in the first place this is a travesty of reasoning (Bonsignore, 1998 21-23).Furthermore it s not only forgetting the past. It s forgetting the present that the past has created. Without affirmative action, nothing would counteract the powerful whites only doors that still exist today. What we would really be doing is rewinding to the past,

because in thought we will have returned to it.

The continuing high levels of discriminatory segregation in the nation’s workplaces indicate that t