Affirmative Action Tidbits

The affirmative action debate is still very much alive today after much discussion in the past few decades. President Barack Obama recently said that he believes in affirmative action to the extent of “overcoming both historic and current discrimination.” He does not, however, believe in a quota system. Obama’s stance is much like the 1978 Supreme Court Regents V. Bakke ruling that outlawed quotas, but allowed race to still be considered a factor in university admissions.
In a recent Gallup poll, 58% respondents said that they favored affirmative action programs for minorities and women for job hiring in the workplace. Even if the majority of people in the United States do seem to support affirmative action, the number of reverse discrimination cases has increased significantly. Disgruntled job or college applicants are looking into the policies of workplaces and universities, most of which promote diversity in some kind of way.

A far better stand on affirmative action, in my opinion, is color blindness. With color blindness, race is not a factor in hiring or admitting. Affirmative action, which tries to give a better opportunity to minorities to make up for past hardships they faced, is not necessarily progress. If we are looking for an equal system, the best one would be color blind because there is no discrimination at all involved. Every person is judged based on characteristics that pertain to how good of a worker or student one could be. No doubt some people are inherently disadvantaged. That’s what makes this scenario complicated. Like one man in the video, I wouldn’t necessary be opposed to some kind of private program that would allow for disadvantaged people to be given a further look.