Affirmative Action Cons

The 1960’s era was a time period for change. From the Vietnam war to the first moon landing, the United states didn’t only change as a nation, but as a society as well. Yet, there is a topic that we all know about that has an underlying sub point. Everyone should know that this is when the Civil Rights movements began, but little know about affirmative action. Affirmative action was meant to help colored citizens be able to get a job and be treated equally in the workforce. Today, it is used to help colored minorities get a college education. The affirmative action plan is highly outdated and it hurts those who try to use it to their advantage.
As time goes by, things become outdated from the lack of proper care or the disregards of its original
Affirmative action is supposed to help minorities that want to go to college but financially can’t. “Affirmative action policies do not necessarily help economically disadvantaged students. A study by the Hoover Institution found that affirmative action tends to benefit middle- and upper-class minorities” (“Affirmative Action: Overview”). If this plan was created to help the worst of the worst, then why isn’t it trying to accommodate for those needs? If someone is in the middle or upper-class, then they shouldn’t necessary be categorized as “minorities”. This is putting true minorities at a disadvantage because they don’t even fit into their own category. Affirmative action should take care off all disadvantaged students, including those who need it the most. Not only does affirmative action tend to not help minorities but it may be unconstitutional. As it says in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “Title VI, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., was enacted as part of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance,” (Title IV of the Civil Rights). Affirmative action only looks at colored minorities who are struggling to get into college, therefore it is a form of discrimination
As stated in the paragraph above, being in the race has been unfair, but workforces and colleges have been using affirmative action to help. Being in the playing field is the same argument only it’s used in a more indirect way. For example: “In predominantly white Portland, Ore., they observed that compared to white pedestrians, black pedestrians had to wait longer for drivers to yield to cross the street, and were passed by twice as many drivers. “Our findings are … consistent,” the researchers conclude, “with behavioral manifestations of implicit racial attitudes,” (Wicks-Lim Jeanette). This article fought that having programs like affirmative action would make the United States less racist. No matter what, there will be non-racist Americans and racist Americans. No amount of programs will be able to change the opinions of someone who stands by them. And if we look throughout history, affirmative action doesn’t help even the playing field because, demographically, there will be more colored citizens in one state compared to another. Colleges should be more willing to accept what was happened in the past and be able to move along. “Two additional reasons why race- conscious admission policies in higher education are still needed today are: (1) to rectify past effects of discrimination on people of color and (2) to ensure that implicit biases do not