Aim of Affirmative Action Policies

Affirmative Action policies are to improve opportunities for historically excluded groups in American society due to factors such as race, color, sex, religion, or national origin.

The main focus of Affirmative Action policies is on education. In institutions of higher education, Affirmative Action aims to provide equal access and opportunity to education for the groups that have been historically excluded, such as women and racial minorities. Affirmative Action first came out after the 1960's Civil Rights Movement. In 1961, President Kennedy was the first to use the term "Affirmative Action in an executive order that required government employers not to discriminate employees or applicants because of their race, belief, skin color, or national origin. In addition, it required government employees to use Affirmative Action to insure that applicants are employed and treated equally without judgment of their race, belief, skin color, or national origin.

Examples of Affirmative Action

There are some major cases of Affirmative Action that led to potential landmark decision. The first case is Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), one of the most important landmark cases in Supreme Court history. What is significant of it is that the Bakke decision created a way to agree with some parts of Affirmative Action while rejecting other parts. Allan Bakke, a white man, had twice applied for admission to the University of California Medical School at Davis and, both times, was rejected. Although his qualifications outweighed any of the minority students who admitted in the two years when Bakke's applications were rejected, minority applicants were given preference. At last, the court decided that the University of California had to admit Bakke, arguing the rigid use of racial quotas at the school violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. However, the court also found that race as part of admissions decisions was constitutional, as long as it was one of several admission criteria. The second case is Grutter v. Bollinger (2003). In 1997, Barbara Grutter, a white person lived in Michigan, wanted to apply for the University of Michigan Law School. The Law School used race as a factor to deny her admission by saying that it serves a "compelling interest in achieving diversity among its student body." The District Court denied the Law School's statement and enjoined its use of race in the admissions process. However, later the Court of Appeals justified the use of racial preferences in admissions by holding Justice Powell's opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), arguing that the use of racial preferences was good for governmental interest.

Controversies and challenges

Controversies surrounding the constitutionality of Affirmative Action programs has made the topic one of heated debate. The cases mentioned in the previous paragraph are debatable. For examples, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), the University of California used the racial factor in the admission process. Some argue that Affirmative Action law was originally established in order to create equal rights for minority groups, but some minority groups use it as a tool to compete unfairly  they now become the "majority. Another criticism about Affirmative Action is that when universities decide what applicants they are choosing, they should be focusing on their abilities, not race, color, or sex. In addition, preferential treatment programs deny benefits to disadvantaged white males  making them become the "minority. Affirmative Action law not only has numerous controversies surrounding it, it also faces some legal challenges. For instance, in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the Court of Appeals allowed universities to take race into account during admissions as long as they didn't quantify their process, which minority students can legally receive benefits from the university's racial preference.

Recent issue

There have been arguments and criticisms that the use of Affirmative Action is "reverse discrimination". In 2018, The Justice Department investigated Harvard University in its use of race in admissions process, accusing it held higher standards for white and Asian students than the minority groups of students. Harvard failed to show that its use of Affirmative Action for race in admission decisions is narrowly followed by law, the Justice Department said in documents that it has supported a federal lawsuit brought by a group which represented Asian-American students.

In my opinion, universities should use Affirmative Action as a reasonable factor to help minority students. However, they should limit its use. For example, some minority groups would try to utilize the policies in unjust ways to benefit themselves. Thus, restricting the deliberate use of the policies by, for example, giving a range of the difference of the standardized score between white students and the minority students is vital. Despite minority groups are more likely to have inferior positions in society, causing their offspring to have unequal distributions of social resources, their offspring who become students can have a certain degree of preference, but this preference should be reconsidered. Therefore, I believe that Affirmative Action is dedicated to help minority students. If it is used in a just way, the admission environment will become fair to every students who have the dream to go to university.

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