Affirmative action has been a move throughout the last several decades that allows people of ethnic backgrounds and women receive equal treatment. My question is this though: Is it working? I don't think so!
While affirmative action programs may have been necessary in the past, in order to give ethnic minorities and women the ability to be hired, instead of having their resume thrown out just because of their race or gender, I do not believe that it is necessary anymore. We claim to be a land of equal opportunities. In my mind affirmative action provides just the opposite.
If we truly are a gender-blind, and color-blind society, as we often claim ourselves to be, why is this sort of program in effect? In many places, businesses are forced to meet certain quotas regarding the number of minority workers they employ, or the ratio of female v. male workers. This is an extremely high burden on the business owner. That takes a lot of extra time and money, and to no avail.
The point of having affirmative action was to prevent discrimination. However, now it is doing just the opposite. There are many, many cases where employers have been forced to hire a minority worker or a female, just because they were that, not because they were the better candidate. They may only be able to perform half as well as another candidate who applied for the job, but they got preference because of their skin color or gender. This is exactly what affirmative action was designed to prevent, and now it's causing it. Instead of preventing discrimination, it's causing discrimination, only this time it is against people who are not of ethnic minorities. This is simply not fair!
I believe affirmative action may have been necessary when first implemented, but I believe this is an outdated law that should be done away with. Instead of forcing businesses to meet certain quotas and ratios, let's examine EVERYONE equally. Let's not take into account a person's gender or race when deciding who gets a job, scholarship, or acceptance to college. Let's look at the quality of the person applying for these things, and choose the best one! This is the only FAIR way to do it. Let's not reverse discriminate, let's not discriminate at all, let's provide an equal opportunity for EVERYONE, not just some!
