Affirmative Action

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews the debate swirling around affirmative action. In particular, the paper argues that affirmative action contains more benefits than debits and that at least some of the arguments put forward in opposition to it can be successfully rebutted by the available evidence. Specifically, the paper reviews the commonplace criticisms that affirmative action diminishes professional standards and also exacerbates racist and/or sexist attitudes towards certain groups. The paper concludes that the reasons in support of affirmative action are plausible and convincingly supported by the literature.

From the Paper:

"For a very long time now, American society has been attempting to come up with a means of ensuring access to higher education and to lucrative jobs for minorities and for women. The most controversial of all the means used has been affirmative action, an approach which has increased the percentage of women and minorities in managerial and professional occupations ("Myth: Affirmative Action Hasn't Worked" n.d.) but has done so, critics charge, by placing people in positions for which they are ill-prepared and/or by discriminating against people simply on the basis of gender or race. Consequently, every failure by someone boosted into a position of authority by affirmative action may actually feed negative stereotypes about the group to which that individual belongs and lead to calls that merit is the greatest victim of affirmative action policies."

More papers on Affirmative Action:

• Argumentative Essay # 83858 : "Affirmative Action "
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• Research Paper # 65181 : "Affirmative Action ? Making it Work"

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