Affirmative Action Argumentative Essay

Affirmative action is a program that serves to redress historical discrimination of the minority groups, particularly the blacks and the Latinos, by means such as preferential treatment, minority scholarships, and in order to break down segregation in work places and university admissions. Since its introduction in the nineteen sixties, affirmative action has had dramatic effects in the selection of applicants, narrowing the alley for the race-majority students. What servers originally to rectify past racial injustices has become a way of reverse discrimination. With its erroneous assumption that all minority students are disadvantaged, affirmative action has not helped the actual disadvantaged, ignoring other more prominent factors that

The original premise, regarded as “weak affirmative action” is to give everyone, including the minorities, “equal opportunity to compete, not equal results” (Pojman 44). Weak affirmative action only provides the fair playing field by making sure that everyone is considered, but the selection process is completely race-neutral. It also claims that it will only serve as a “tie breaker”, as to distinguish between two equal-skilled applicants in the final decision if they are of different races. On the contrary, the weak form of affirmative action has been distorted, with its racial preferences accentuated, to form the controversial “strong affirmative action”. Over the past decade, many high-level institutions have taken on the form of strong affirmative action in its admission process, giving unfair advantage to minority applicants and discriminating against others, particularly the Asian and white applicants. Moreover, those who benefit from affirmative action has not received satisfying results, due to a mismatch in their personal abilities and academic credentials and the institution’s high