It was once said by Joseph Addison that “’Tis not in mortals to command success, but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.” That relates directly to affirmative action; a government based program that gives advantages to certain people because of their race in order for them to get into college or get a job. Affirmative action is a racist issue that had been going on until it was banned in the state of California after being stated that “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” (Pearson Education.) Affirmative action is racist, depends on personal judgment and people do not like to be taken pity of as opposed to earning what they have. This past law declared as “RACISM because it gives preference to some people based solely on their RACE” by the History channel on September 30th, 2005.
First and foremost, there are evident manifestations of racism through affirmative action. This plan was even called “positive discrimination” by Wikipedia, demonstrating how discriminative it is. In the contrary, it is positive at all, in fact, it is the wrong way to look at people. Applicants should be valued by their scores and results, not by their last names, color or gender. It appears like the government is trying to make it up to the African Americans whose ancestors might have been victims of slavery. However, there are some things that simply will not be forgotten because of their intensity. Nobody put it in words better than Lyndon B. Johnson (vice president of the Congress of Racial Equality) in his speech at Harvard University in 1965 when he said “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line in a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others’, and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” (Wikipedia.) In addition, many believe that benefitting sons and grandsons of slaves will not pay for what has been done to people that came before them. Then again, all this depends on what one person might think.
Unfortunately, nobody really knows who struggles more; a black or white person, a Hispanic kid in Lennox Academy or a Hispanic kid in Hawthorne. It has been reported that Hawthorne High School has an inflated grade system based on an extremely low curve while students at Lennox Academy’s curve demands much more from the students. Nevertheless, Hawthorne High School has fights in campus more than once a week while Lennox Academy has had very few fights so far. It is now when the people’s judgment comes in; who deserves the advantage? Who struggled more? Although this is a very small example, situations like this happen all the time. For example, the situation when “two lawsuits by white applicants who had been rejected to the University of Michigan began working their way through the federal court system.” (Stohr.) Most likely those white students had roughly the same scores as the black students getting accepted each passing day and probably worked as hard, but at the point when the applications were reviewed, all the admission office saw was the word “black” and immediately resolved to admit them first. Counterstatements to this law date back to the year 1787, when the constitution was written. Wikipedia explains it by saying that “In the U.S. Constitution, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment mandates that no governmental entity burden a person or deny them benefits because they are members of a particular racial group.” Race does not mark the differences, income might, but that is not the main deciding factor of afirmative action.
Lastly, we shall not forget the principle of merit: deserving the good things we get. Many people had to struggle while growing up and developing their educational culture, but accepting pity from others is not such a great thing. Pete Du Pont asked exactly what I was wondering when he questioned “Why is it national policy to overrule the concept of merit? Why do we insist that the standards our society uses to measure excellence be adjusted to insure equivalent outcomes among various racial and ethnic groups, that any testing system must produce roughly equal outcomes among men and women, Hispanics and Asians, blacks and whites and Native Americans?” (The Internet Party.) Merit should never be counted second, especially if it is second to race. InfoPlease was not errand when they said that “President Clinton asserted in a speech that while Adarand set ‘stricter standards to mandate reform of affirmative action, it actually reaffirmed the need for affirmative action and reaffirmed the continuing existence of systematic discrimination in the United States.’” This because there are certain cases when deeper review and full understanding of the situation is required and a very unfortunate person might need a little bit of extra help, but that is just part of the admission process as it is.
Therefore, I stand against affirmative action or “the new form or racism.” According to my reasoning, every time race is considered into a decision, racism is occuring. Racism, generalization “due to racial preferences” and the rewardness of merit are just some of the reasons that determine my decision. (Wikipedia.) Luckily, affirmative action is not currently being executed in our state. This law took so long to ban because it was stated in June 12, 1995 that “‘the unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination against minority groups in this country’ justified the use of race-based remedial measures in certain circumstances.” (InfoPlease.) Although the argument might seem credible, I still think, as a Hispanic woman, that I will earn what I deserve and nothing more. Most importantly of all, I will be proud of that work and call it “my own.”
