The Equity of Affirmative Action

Anemia settled in for several days in the city of Los Angeles in April and March 1992. Fires broke out Throughout the city, store were plundered, fifty people died, and 2000 were injured after a jury acquitted four police officers accused of violating the civil rights of Rodney King, an African American, who had been savagely beaten by the agents. It was evident that the cause which prompted the black uprising had its roots on grounds far deeper than the superficiality of the one at hand: Blacks have been engaged in a continual, historical strife to achieve equality under the laws that we stand for. This confrontation between blacks and whites has seriously threaten the stability of the nation since its foundation, prodding Congress to amend the Constitution and pass several civil rights acts which along with the power of the federal courts have been aimed to achieve racial equality and integration. Thus was born in the early 1970's affirmative action programs, which give blacks and minority groups special employment and academic considerations to overcome the disadvantage produce by traditional racial discrimination. Law professor Stephen L. Carter, however, does not agree with these programs because he believes their condescends is detrimental to African American success. Holding an opposite view, professor of African American studies Herbert Hill shows the still prevalent prejudice of whites and the need of affirmative action programs to control the effect of the racist practice. I agree with him. Professor Carter, propose the abolition of affirmative action because he believes these programs are pernicious for African Americans and because the low achievements blacks are the results not of discrimination but of their own bias. Affirmative action implies that blacks are unable to compete with other groups; it means blacks are relegated to a lower status as persons in the social structure. Blacks will do better without preferences because they will be compel to compete vigorously as everybody else; they will develop skills and talents otherwise dormant by lack of stimulus and by the complacency of assistance. The low achievements of the black race are the result of their prejudiced mentality. They believe that to have a higher education implicitly means adoption of the White's values and surrender of their own African identity. When it is argued that racial preferences result in admission of less capable individuals, that there are persons with excellent talents for whom the best opportunities should be available, affirmative action advocates retaliate attacking the employment and academic tests themselves, alleging they lack objectivity, are biased and racist. But, they are wrong, and blacks will remain behind if they do not integrate into society. Instead of worrying about the standards used, blacks should show they have the skills and capacities to compete for the best positions and jobs in the market. We need this struggle for excellence which has advanced and refined civilization. We need to encourage this pursuit in individuals, so they can come out with the best of themselves. Affirmative action frustrates this search for excellence among blacks by patronizing them and by not challenging the minds of their smarter members. Opposing Carter's, position professor Hill,claims affirmative action programs are not so much a privilege for blacks but a way to end the white supremacy established by traditional black oppression. Since the very beginning of this country, racism was ingrained in the whites' minds by the authority if the great constitution and by a progeny of statutes and acts that treated blacks as less than humans. The reconstruction amendments to the constitution and the civil rights acts made to Strong and enforce them contained Nobel words of justice and equality for the emancipated, blacks, but were utterly devoid of the spirit given to laws by the collective consciousness of their people. Thus blacks as a class continue under oppression during the strengthening of the Post-Civil War industrial revolution, being excluded from the labor unions by European working class who controlled all the levels of the enterprise systems. This social discrimination kept them still in chains, living in slums and ghetto es, poor and uneducated. Arrogance continued to be the practice of the white ethnic groups until the Supreme Court and Congress stepped in again in the 1950s and 1960s to contain the tearing down of the American social fabric. The abstract notions of equality for long in the codes and constitutions finally began to be backed up by the power of the National Government and by affirmative actions, in favor of blacks and minority groups. The noxious sentiments in whites' minds and the historic subjugation of the blacks race justify affirmative action programs as means to achieve racial integration and to compensate for the unjust advantage of whites in academic and employment sectors. Indeed, the eradication of slavery and racism intended by the adoption of the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution demand a contemporary interpretation in favor of this view. I concur with professor Hill, because America is a racist society in which both whites and blacks have strong traces of prejudice against each other. To claim as professor Carter, does that, affirmative action impair the potentiality of blacks applicants is to obviate the issue: because employment and academic opportunities are limited, a choice regularly has to be made about which ones of the qualified applicants--blacks, minorities, or whites, will be selected. Unless the insolent claim is made that lacks do not excel in anything, they will normally be able candidates for the positions. It is this selection among qualified, different-color applicants that the arguments about affirmative action must contend with. A person, black or white, comes short of his capacities because of his feeble effort, not because of his preferential treatment. It is then this selecting process, to fill up employment and academic positions, which must be analyzed. And as the overwhelming evidence compiled through history show us, white' racist attitudes have distorted the social equality of races so much that the least that can be done to correct the injustice is to give this kind of privilege to minorities and blacks. No law can change the habits and attitudes of whites' but it can prevent social iniquities that more likely will disappear with passage of time. Since the Colonial enslavement, blacks have been degraded as human beings. They were excluded from the solemn rights granted by the Constitution; persecuted and maltreated by white terrorist groups. Denied from the end of Reconstruction until World War II their constitutional right to vote by the "white primary" and grandfather clause' used by southern states; and rejected from the labor unions and major intellectual institutions. When the government took action in their favor in the 1950s' and 1960s' the racist sentiment was still so strong that state governors such as Orval Fabe's from Arkansas and George Wallace from Alabama directed themselves the public hatred against African Americans by using the power of their states' National Guards. Racist patterns were also evident in school boards which arbitrarily drew school district lines to segregate African American children; and in state legislatures, which imposed "poll taxes" and voting districts, by areas instead of population, that effectively excluded blacks, specially their poor from the political process. Some persons would like to think that over 50 years since the Supreme Courts ruled segregation as unconstitutional has been enough to cure the American society from racial prejudices. But, event like the one at Baylor University and the plot against President elect Mr. Obama; laws cannot change attitudes but, enforcing them during a whole generation might make the next one conscious of their ignorance.

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