Unconscious Bias

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its olds dimensions,” stated Oliver Wendell Holmes, an associate justice of the United States’ Supreme Court.

Good Morning.

For those of you unfamiliar with Affirmative Action, it is a policy aimed towards improving opportunities for groups, such as racial minorities and women, in education and employment. The policy was first created by the martyred President Kennedy and, eventually, put into action by President Johnson. This action came ten years after the Brown v. the Board of Education ruling. The supreme court ruled the theory of “separate but equal” as unconstitutional. The key to the overturn was the idea of an unequal educational experience and opportunity. Webster’s

By examining this statistic from Forbes, it is clear that relying on our unconscious bias, to prevent racism and sexism, is unrealistic. An unconscious bias is defined by the Huffington Post as a prejudice formed from personal experiences, perceptions, and attitudes that is unrecognized by the perpetrator. Within fortune 500 company CEO’s: only six are African American, eight are Asians, eight are Latinos, and twenty two are women. It would be quite the overstatement to call CEO positions diverse. However, one could make the argument that these are CEO positions and are not the majority of the workforce. Yet, the majority of the workforce still lacks diversity. In the workforce, 80% of jobs are held by whites, 12% are by African Americans, 5% are by Asians, and 3% are unidentified. Considering whites populate 63.7% of the nation, the workforce is clearly not equal. Affirmative action can be a solution to this type of systemic problem. As it creates a diverse background of employees. A diverse community in which cultures are shared and understood, ultimately working to destroy racism and

However, there is a burly conscious bias. Studies by Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Chicago show that: 51% of people consciously stated that they hated Hispanics and African Americans. In an effort to combat this, Gallup, an American based research company, asked citizens how they felt about different affirmative action programs. Policies which raised awareness of fairness in hiring racial minorities had an 82% acceptance rate. Setting quotas for minorities in the workforce, but requiring them to meet the same standards as others had a 66% support rate. Lastly, 60% of people supported affirmative action programs that helped African Americans get better education and jobs. In a Democracy, it would only be logical to listen to the desires of the American people and the people desire Affirmative