John F. Kennedy's Arguments Against Affirmative Action

“Affirmative action” is a term coined by President John F. Kennedy and was used when he passed Executive Order 10925. As a continuation of his legacy, presidents after him, such as Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald Ford, furthered these programs in order to help groups of people in America that who faced discrimination in the past. However, as more and more of these programs developed, people that opposed these programs created the term “reverse-discrimination,” meaning that by allowing affirmative action programs, the system was unfair towards groups that did not benefit from affirmative action. In addition, more court cases stemmed from opposition towards affirmative action and some even banned the usage of affirmative action programs from being
Eventually, affirmative action programs were used to help those that were formally discriminated against and used to promote diversity, because it is a compelling government interest, within public university campuses. As more and more time passed, the subject of affirmative action stirred a lot of controversy, and as a result, proponents continue to try to ban affirmative action policies in individual
Bollinger (2003). In this case, the school in question provided a “holistic review that considered both academic performance and the applicant’s contribution to the school’s racial and ethnic diversity” (Fourteenth, 262). These court cases cause universities to apply a very large limitation on many programs that use race as a factor in order to admit someone into a university. If race is only considered a “factor of a factor of a factor of a factor” (Fourteenth, 261), is it really necessary to completely ban the usage of affirmative action policies in the university