Thursday, November 9, 2017

Affirmative action: How it Hurts Minorities By: Melissa Fenn


Affirmative Action: Why it Hurts Minorities!

What is Affirmative Action?

"Affirmative action policies are those in which an institution or organization actively engages in efforts to improve opportunities for historically excluded groups in American society. Affirmative action policies often focus on employment and education. In institutions of higher education, affirmative action refers to admission policies that provide equal access to education for those groups that have been historically excluded or underrepresented, such as women and minorities. Controversy surrounding the constitutionality of affirmative action programs has made the topic one of heated debate."  (NCSL, 2014)

Background on Affirmative Action

Affirmative action is an outcome of the 1960's Civil Rights Movement, intended to provide equal opportunities for members of minority groups and women in education and employment. In 1961, President Kennedy was the first to use the term "affirmative action" in an Executive Order that directed government contractors to take "affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." The Executive Order also established the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, now known as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)." (NCSL, 2014)

Found this to be true when I was conversing with others about the topic of Affirmative Action. Some people felt it was unfair and gave valid reasons as to why and others gave valid reasons as to why it was just. We all come from different backgrounds and have had different experiences, let us RESPECT those differences.


Why does it matter to me?




Affirmative action directly affects me due to my future job field as a Human Resource Manager. It is a topic that has come up often in my classes and in personal conversations with friends and acquaintances. I chose this topic because it is a matter of contention; I have heard convincing debates for the support of affirmative action and against it. I am currently working on a bachelors degree in Human Resources and understand that diversity in the workplace is important and affirmative action is part of diversity but is also very controversial. Diversity in the workplace and in schools is a matter that is still talked about and an issue, not just racially but also sexually. I am very broken with this topic because I understand why it was a policy that was created for a good, but I truly feel that it is reverse discrimination. How is it fair when a qualified person in particular a white man is unable to get a job based on their ethnicity because a company is required to fill a certain percentage of ethnic employees is discriminating.

My Personal Opinion


IF THERE IS MORE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION TO HELP THE LOWER INCOME COMMUNITIES THEN THE EDUCATION WOULD BE BETTER AND THEN IT WOULD LEAD THEM TO GETTING BETTER JOBS AND IT WOULD INCREASE THEIR WEEKLY EARNINGS LEADING TO THEM WILL BE QUALIFIED FOR COLLEGE AND JOBS WHICH COULD POSSIBLY ELIMINATE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.


Friedrich Hayek, Austrian-British Economist and Philosopher

Affirmative action is a nice concept, but my research found that it is a policy which is an illusion. Affirmative action leads people to believe that it provides fair opportunity while in reality it is a "smoke in the mirror" concept which hurts minorities and does nothing at all to help those who are living in poverty.



Check out this video about why Jay Fayza of TheRebel.media is not a fan of affirmative action:

In case you had issues with playing the video here is the link:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgiJt6aIOjs

How it hurts minorities:

  • Affirmative action reflects negativity. For example, companies have been known to set up bogus interviews with minorities to avoid being sued even though they already had their mind made up on who they want to hire.

  • Organizations just hiring minorities to make quotas and receive incentives. Many minorities morale is affected because they say that they don't know if they were hired because they were good enough or just because the organization needed to make a quota. "Even proponents of affirmative action realize that it can be problematic: Individuals in protected classes often argue that they are never really sure whether they receive jobs or promotions because of their protected-class status or their own individual abilities, qualifications, and accomplishments." (Mello, Pg. 299)

  • Mismatch, Dan slater the author of Does Affirmative Action Do What It Should? article in the NY Times says "It suggests that students who are admitted to high ranking universities on partially non-academic grounds (their race) are often less prepared for that level of work. These students did not have the same academic opportunities and there for on average make up the bottom of their classes. The theory suggests that in the end it ends up hurting the student because they often don't complete school" he continues with statistics saying "“Mr. Sander’s analysis of the B.P.S. data found that 21 percent of the black students who went to their second-choice schools failed the bar on their first attempt, compared with 34 percent of those who went to their first choice.”
    "Two legal experts make the explosive argument that affirmative action hurts minority students’ educational and career chances—and that liberals are in denial about it." (BasicBooks, 2017)
    http://www.mismatchthebook.com/

     
  • Individual merits not taken into consideration, just race and organizations buy into it because they receive incentives from the government if they are considered a "diverse" organization.
    • Merit- the quality of being particularly good or worthy, especially so as to deserve praise or reward. (Oxford Dictionaries, 2017)

  • Affirmative action does not require organizations to hire individuals who are not qualified to hold positions for which they apply. If the organization has a clear job description and qualifications that it can prove are specifically job related—and can show that it has made a sincere effort to recruit individuals from underutilized populations—it may continue to show discrepancies between utilization and availability.

  • Discrimination does not help to fight discrimination. EEO rests on the assumption that any initiative to show preference to any member of a protected class would be, in and of themselves, illegal and just turn the tables by unfairly discriminating against the majority. Therefore, the only way to ensure a discrimination-free society and workplace is to wipe the slate clean. History cannot be rewritten, and past injustices cannot be corrected by discriminatory treatment in the present. In short, EEO argues that "two wrongs do not make things right.” (Mello, Pg. 298)

  • The Asian community has unfair SAT standards. "there’s certainly compelling evidence that indicates Asians are disadvantaged by affirmative action—namely East Asians, who constitute the vast majority of elite-college applicants. In 2005, a Princeton study found that Asian Americans must score 140 points more than white students of otherwise comparable caliber on the 1600-point SAT in order to be considered equals in the application process; it also found that they’d have to score 270 points higher than Latino students and 450 points higher than black students." (Wong, 2017) This is stereotyping, the assumption that all Asians are all high academic achievers is unfair.


Members of my community and their opinions:
 

 
 
"In the past, affirmative action was necessary for a diverse balance in the workplace and in schools. Now I feel we do not need it, we should hire based on qualification, if we do than more people will come up to the surface to make sure they meet the qualifications. If we keep affirmative action then the dominant race will become a minority and thus we will have an issue of reverse discrimination which is a real thing."
                                
                                        -Carl 46,
                                        Latin-American
 
 
 
 
 
 

"It's stupid, no person should be hired for a job based of race and sexual orientation. Affirmative action is damaging and alienates white people. No one is special, no one is cool, we are all people. What makes a person special is how they live their life. It doesn't even help for the big paying jobs, those are acquired through networking and who you know, not based on your race and sexual orientation."
                                                           -Anonymous 52,
                                                            Puerto Rican-American

 
"Old policy that used to be necessary, but no longer and should be repealed. If you really want equality than all should be placed on the same standards. In it's own sense it is racism. Implemented so schools can be diverse, now schools have to have 5% African Americans who in some cases are set up for failure if they are not qualified to attend the school in the first place. Now schools comply with affirmative action to say they are diverse and to receive federal funding for being diverse."
                                         -Matt, 32
                                          Caucasian
 
 
 
Members of Community who feel affected by Affirmative Action
                                   
"I have benefited greatly from affirmative action. I applied for an internship job at SpaceX , I know I was not qualified and had a normal GPA of 3.3 at a community college. There were way more qualified people who had higher GPAs and were white but, they picked me. I do believe they picked me because I marked off their checkmarks for diversity because I am Hispanic, I was a community college student and I am a veteran. I do feel hiring me checked off so many boxes that it gave the company an opportunity to hire more qualified talents."
                                   Gabriel 28,
                                   Mexican-American
                    
 "It is still being used today? Affirmative action is unfair; when it was first implemented, qualified white people who paid their way through college were not getting hired because companies were so worried about hiring ethnic minorities who were unqualified."
 -Christine 69,
Irish-American

All I ask is that you ask yourself if affirmative action is truly just and if it is a cause that is worth the negatives that are attached to it.

 
 
 
 
 
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog
and take care!
Author
Melissa Fenn

 
 
 

References



 Mello, Jeffrey A.. Strategic Human Resource Management (Page 298). South-Western College Pub. Kindle Edition.
The article “Does Affirmative Action Do What it Should?” by: Dan Slater (Found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/does-affirmative-action-do-what-it-should.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMSTukS5A8M whiteness, aa harms Asians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-h7Ph5U7QM punishing Asians, failure on aa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgiJt6aIOjs why I hate aa, libertarian approach vs. Marxist approach. matching students if they are average. Mismatch, not prepared for could not excel.
Bigotry through low expectations. Not saying that blacks are incapable of entering ivy league schools. Some for woman who are put in positions they are not capable. min 8:24.
Published on Jan 26, 2017
Jay Fayza of TheRebel.media says that a libertarian, meritocratic approach to higher education makes more sense than the Marxist focus on quotas. MORE: http://www.therebel.media/why_i_hate_...
Never miss a new video: http://www.youtube.com/c/RebelMediaTV
PLUS http://www.Facebook.com/JoinTheRebel *** http://www.Twitter.com/TheRebelTV

http://www.mismatchthebook.com/







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