Sunday, 1 March 2015

Should Affirmative Action be scrapped or nah?



I could only come up with five points but there's a lot to talk about, so it should be enough.

End Affirmative Action
Keep it
The USA is a highly competitive society; this has a positive dimension as it provides incentives for people to strive to achieve their goals and ambitions. By using AA incentives are reduced for the less successful in society to better themselves and they will become heavily dependent on government programmes rather than actually working towards their goals. Serves as a disincentive.
Individuals cannot strive to achieve their goals if they’re at a disadvantage because of their race. Political authorities have got a responsibility to provide sufficient resources in deprived districts populated with minorities so they have the same opportunity as whites to achieve their goals. There is a role for government in helping people to help themselves.
AA is seen as a type of welfare, which allows minorities to claim they have been put at a disadvantage because of past discrimination in order to benefit from AA. These “disadvantages” are also faced by other minorities who have prospered in recent years despite not benefiting from AA, such as Southeast Asian and Indian students who do well and are usually disadvantaged because of poor English communicational skills. This demonstrates that values like obedience, diligence and commitment lead to success even for those who are disadvantaged and AA is just an excuse to be lazy.
However, its wrong to assume that minorities in the US lay claim that they’re disadvantaged just so they can benefit from AA as there have been increasing efforts of black communities helping themselves. They only turn to help from the government when their small community with limited resources can’t overcome obstacles of their own. E.g. communities have created initiatives designed to help young people like Harlem Children’s Zone in NYC which aims to provide guidance for young mothers, relationship counseling and summer activities.
AA exists as a form of compensation for past discrimination, which has made certain racial groups suffer. However, past discrimination cannot be the primary reason for some racial groups suffering, it all depends on lifestyle choices made in communities, such as drug or alcohol abuse. In the No Excuses book, the authors argue people who have equal skills and knowledge will have roughly equal earnings regardless of race regardless of what discrimination they may have experienced in the past.
The left has rejected No Excuses’ claim that people with the same knowledge and skills will earn equally no matter the race. Some employers continue to not consider applicants living in certain districts despite them having appropriate skills and qualifications, because of this, unemployment among black communities can be as high as 50% in New York and Chicago (2 of the wealthiest cities)
Moderates suggest that a significant proportion of the groups that benefit from AA have prospered over the past 40 years, and thus, the policy is no longer required. E.g. the proportion of African-Americans in white collar jobs is now over 70%
However, AA has benefited American society a lot thus far, so it can benefit society even further by creating more levels of diversity. It makes no sense to abandon a project that has been successful when it is incomplete. Also, blacks are still lagging behind the white majority population in many aspects of society.
By giving a preference or an advantage to one group leads inevitably to disadvantage for another group, this is reverse discrimination. You cannot end racial inequality with something that inevitably encourages racial inequality.
Regardless, it remains one of the most effective means so far devised by the government to deliver the promise of equal opportunity. And it has been proven to work as demonstrated by the fact that the number of African-American’s completing high school is now as high as 86%, an increase from 39% in the 1960s

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