Affirmative Action Pros and Cons

California Proposition 209
The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.
The Supreme Court has given support to affirmative action policies in years past (i.e. Bakke v Regents of the University of California). However, many recent court decisions have begun calling it into question.  Voters in California recently considered the proposition above, and voters in Washington state and in Houston, TX have also considered a similar question.

Challenges to affirmative action generally focuses on the following three questions:

Read the following quotes for and against affirmative action:

Pro

Con
"In order to get beyond racism we must first take account of race.  There is no other way.  And in order to treat someone equally, we must first treat them differently."
- Justice Harry Blackmun
 "The equal protection standard of the constitution has one clear and central meaning -- it absolutely prohibits invidious [repugnant] discrimination by government...Under our Constitution, any official action that treats a person differently on account of his race or ethnic origin is inherently [by nature] suspect and presumptively [probably] invalid...Under the Constitution we have, one practice in which government may never engage in the practice of racism -- not even "temporarily" and not even as an "experiment."
 - Justice Potter Stewart
"The unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination ...is an unfortunate reality...and the government is not disqualified from acting in response to it."
- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
 "Too often the result of affirmative action has been an artificial diversity that gives the appearance of parity between blacks and whites that has not yet been achieved in reality...Preferences tend to attack one form of discrimination with another...Affirmative action encourages a victim-focused identity, and sends the message that there is more power in our past suffering than in our present achievements."
- Shelby Steele, Professor
"...The Court ...[recognizes]...the persistence of racial inequality and a majority's acknowledgement of Congress's authority to act affirmatively, not only to end discrimination, but also to counteract discrimination's lingering effects.  Those effects, reflective of a system of racial caste [legal segregation and discrimination] only recently ended, are evident in our work places, markets, and neighborhoods.  Job applicants with identical resumes, qualifications, and interview styles still experience different receptions, depending on their race. 
- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
 "Affirmative action is...an effort to correct an immense historical injustice with small doses of "injustice" in the present.  It is an effort to lift some blacks...into the middle class. It should properly be seen not as a sacrifice by whites for the benefits of the next.  The cost is paid today--by whites shunted aside, and, more subtly, by the blacks obliged to doubt that their advancement is personally deserved.  ...The payoff will come tomorrow, when a new generation of black children is born into the middle class...In any event, affirmative action can work only at the margins.  It can pull up only those who are ready to be pulled up.  It can do little or nothing for the mind-numbingly dreadful problems of ...crime, drugs, children bearing children, family atomization [breakup], despair, peer pressure to fail in school, and all the fearful rest.
- Hedrick Smith, Journalist

Now that you have read some arguments for and against affirmative action, complete your own pro / con chart below.  What do you see as the benefits and the drawbacks of affirmative action?

Pro

Con

 
 

 

  

 
 

 

  

 
 

 

  

 
What is your opinion of affirmative action? How effective is it?  Weigh the merits of affirmative action policies in terms of legality, fairness and practicality.


originally from here...