Anthony Gebara
Rhetoric 309K
Wiedmeyer
24 April 2018
Audience: Democratic National Convention and Democratic supporters
Affirmative Action is Not the Appropriate Action In the modern context of society, it seems that the majority of Americans go out of their way to be politically correct. This censorship is done in an effort to sensitize the discrimination that existed decades ago by racially preferring minorities. Both government and society attempt to resolve racism through racial preference. Affirmative action is a government-initiated policy of racial preference in the college admission process, but this policy has become very controversial as society becomes more diverse. Affirmative action, fundamentally, originates from a liberal stance…show more content… Class diversity is extremely important in not only allowing for equal opportunity throughout races, but in also allowing for a continuation of shared unique experiences. Similarly, astrophysicist Jedidah Isler writes in her editorial “The ‘Benefits’ of Black Physics Students” that, “if we limit the physics classroom to white students… we also limit the production of new information about the world” (Isler, par. 17). The objective seems explicit - to ensure the safety of class diversity. Through this logic, it seems that affirmative action’s sole purpose is to create class diversity, however, the rhetoric of this is counterproductive. In reality, affirmative action is used in an attempt to resolve past relations between whites and marginalized groups by favoring marginalized groups in admission processes. Therefore, the intended purpose and the actual purpose of affirmative action differ greatly. The intended purpose of affirmative action is to create “class diversity,” while the actual purpose of…show more content… Bollinger Supreme Court cases of 2003 found affirmative action to be constitutional in higher education. Supporters of affirmative action argue it as a remedy for past discrimination and a necessity for achieving diversity in the classroom. However, affirmative action is only technically constitutional if race is treated as one factor among many in an admission process and its purpose is to “achieve a ‘diverse’ class” (Bollinger par. 1). Yale Law school graduate Linda Greenhouse writes in her editorial that since the landmark court decisions, university “applicants [receive] ‘holistic’ consideration of all their attributes, including race” (Greenhouse par. 7). Many universities however have failed to comply with the intended purpose of affirmative action by rewarding minorities with a greater chance of admission. By doing this, universities tinker with the legality of affirmative action. Moreover, law officials are following some unorthodox policy of appeasement by allowing this unconstitutional process to continue. This occurs once the affirmative action program is publicly reviewed and the idea of “class diversity” is later reinforced. This issue is brought forth continually, even as recent as 2015, simply because the true purpose of affirmative action differs from the constitutionality of it. In society, affirmative action is not a tool used in the effort to create class diversity, but is a tool used as reparations for historically discriminated
