Moral Justice of Affirmative Action in Education

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的paper代写范文- Moral Justice of Affirmative Action in Education，供大家参考学习，这篇论文讨论了教育平权行动。平权行动是美国一项非常有争议的政策，不过人们对其知之甚少。平权行动的实施旨在为历史上遭受种族歧视的人们提供公正的补偿。但随着越来越多的州颁布法律禁止在大学招生时考虑种族因素，这一问题受到了严重的挑战。这一新的趋势也意味着平权行动中公平价值的变化。平等保护的实施已经从强调集体平等转向强调公民个人享有的平等权利。毕竟在现代社会中，个人之间平等的实现本质上就是公平。

Introduction

In America, the ethnic minorities have no opportunities to enjoy any preferential points in college entrance examinations, nevertheless, their equal rights in college enrollment, employment and other related aspects are being protected. Government, colleges and enterprises are supposed to provide all the applicants with equal opportunities for competition as much as possible, avoiding any discrimination caused by differences in skin, gender, religion or other factors. This is the main claim of Affirmative Action. In practice, women and minorities generally possess an unfavorable position in economical and social life. Affirmative action has the same goal as equal opportunity, but differs from equal opportunity in being proactive (Burstein 1994). With the Affirmative Action, employers usually incline to them slightly to increase their chances of being employed. However, the Affirmative Action, which stars from a good point, has suffered unprecedented challenges in the past a few years. Many people think that the Affirmative Action seems to be overcorrect, especially in education. The policy is too biased to protect the interest of the minority groups, which leads to inequality among the majority of the white and men, averting the discrimination (Crosby & Cordova 1996). This reverse discrimination makes competition become more unequal in another direction.

Historical Development

Affirmative Action is a policy in the 1960s, with the rise of the American Black Movement and the women’s movement. This was firstly initiated by the President Johnson 1965, arguing that colleges and enterprises should incline to minorities and women when conducting enrollment and employment (Nittle 2017). The purpose was to change historical discrimination against the blacks and women for a long period. After the implementation of Affirmative Action, the admission rate of the blacks and women and the success rate of the blacks in government contracts were been greatly improved. The enrollment system in colleges and universities even became the main focus of Affirmative Action. Some universities even explicitly adopted the bonus system for the blacks or give them a percentage quota policy.

However, it was from the 1970s that people began to have opposing opinions to Affirmative Action. The main doubt was that the Affirmative Action was too overcorrect, leading to reverse discrimination ultimately. The Bakke Case occurring in 1978 launched the first gun against the Affirmative Action (Richard 1979). As a white man, Bakke was refused to be admitted by a media college for two consecutive years. In the meanwhile, the medical college allocated 16% quota for the black students, allowing some black students with poorer conditions than Bakke to college as a result (Richard 1979). Feeling confused and unfair, Bakke appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States directly. The Supreme Courted agreed that that a 16% percentage quota system for the blacks was unconstitutional, but it still supported the Affirmative Action in principle.

Then, influenced by this case, there were growing opposing voices to the Affirmative Action. Murmurs developed into arguments, and then turned to protests. The most famous protest against the Affirmative Action was led by Californian governor Peter Wilson in the 1990s. He protested that they should encourage individual talents, instead of allowing collective rights to override individual rights. Thus he launched a campaign to abolish the Affirmative Action. The public California University with nine of its branches abolished the Affirmative Action when enrolling fresh students. Californian then abolished the Affirmative Action through the referendum manner in aspects of education, employment, government bidding and so on. The effectiveness of abolishing the Affirmative Action was apparent and immediate, leading to the result of obvious decreased admission rate of the black students in many universities and colleges. Being affected by California and its series of abolishment, dozens of other states had begun to eradicate the Affirmative Action as well.

Years later, the Affirmative Action became a hot national issue in 2013 for another time. This was due to the emergence of a new “Bakke Case”, confronted by the Supreme Court in this year. In other words, the Bollinger Case from the University of Michigan caused wide attention from the whole nation. At the end of this case, the Supreme Court made a mild decision and announcement once again. They admitted that the admission policy of the Michigan University was unconditional, as it gave another 20 points to those minority applicants for the university. However, the Supreme Courts also admitted its legitimation for increasing ethnic diversity while inclining to the minorities. The case is another presentation of the Bakke Case in 1978. The Supreme Court supports the Affirmative Action in principle but opposes to fixing the effectiveness of Affirmative Action in a quantitative way.

Supporting Arguments on Affirmative Action

The initial motivation and purpose of the Affirmative Action was considerably good and positive. But its was inevitable to suffer from controversies and debates during its implementation process, with overcorrect tendencies. The supporters for the Affirmative Action mainly possess the following arguments. The Affirmative action is conducive to the realization of the rights to education equality of the ethnic minorities in the field of higher education in the United States. Then, it is useful for the achievement in compensation justice, making up for the inequality caused by discrimination in history. Furthermore, the policies can play an important role in promoting American multiculturalism especially the development of American campus culture.

Supporters for Affirmative Action are convinced that this can realize the right of equality for the collection education. The constitution indicates that all American citizens enjoy rights of equality under the protection of law, including their political rights, social rights, economical rights as well as cultural rights. Being a part of cultural rights, the equal right to accept education is also protected. Due to American racial discrimination history, the blacks used to be taken as slaves, with no rights at all. With the abolishment of slavery, the ethnic minorities including the blacks receive more protecting measurements. Limited by geographical positions, ethnic minorities with African and Hispanic backgrounds live in areas with weak educational levels. In this sense, the Affirmative Action is the reflection of making up for congenital conditions for these minorities by providing admission privileges to these students in higher educational levels. Thus more blacks are able to enter higher educational fields, receiving qualified education and enjoy the equal right to education. In more than fifty years’ of its implementation, the proportion of blacks and Hispanic students have increased significantly, with more opportunities to receive higher education.

Compensation justice can be achieved through Affirmative Action.

Fairness and justice have always been the ideas for several human generations. In western history, compensation justice can be traced back to Aristotle's corrective justice. In American history, the existence of racial discrimination and racial segmentation forced the blacks and other ethnic minorities to suffer oppression for a long time. They los their basic human rights as American citizens, living an inhuman slavery life. In order to eliminate long-time unfair treatment and ethnic discrimination, it is a must to ensure the equal that the blacks and other minorities share equal rights with the whites in employment, contract, and education. However, the compensation justice cannot solve racial discrimination radically. As a means of compensation, Affirmative Action can provide students from ethnic minorities with opportunities to enter higher level colleges.

Affirmative Action contributes to American multiculturalism. Multiculturalism prevailed in the United States from 1980s to 1990s. It specially refers that, based on communities, there is recognition of different cultures and respect for different ethnic minorities. The multicultural development has been recognized by many countries. A country must proceed to diversification in economy, culture and other fields as long as it aims to keep up with the trend of the world. For an immigrant country, racial integration is an inevitable tendency for America. Following worldwide multiculturalism trend, Affirmative Action has provided new measurements for multicultural development. With students’ diversification, college culture can be enriched. This can meet the demand for diversified talents and improve teaching strengths.

Opposing Arguments on Affirmative Action

The opponents hold their view that the Affirmative Action in educational field is likely to constitutes reverse discrimination, contrary to the core values of American social values, which may even lead to a theory of stigma.

Affirmation Action has been identified as contrary to the core American social values.

Values including fairness, justice and freedom have been respected by the American society. However, the preferential enrollment scheme for ethnic minorities in higher education is contrary to these values obviously. Equality should be enjoyed by every citizen as an individual, which is absolutely formal. The American Constitution makes it clear that the equality applies to every American citizen, avoiding any reasonable difference in reality. Affirmative Action indicates different enrollment standards for candidates with different races and colors. The color blind policy in American has been totally ignored this way.

Affirmative Action is likely to constitutes reverse discrimination. In more than fifty years’ of implementation, Affirmative Action has been subjected to various criticisms, among which reverse discrimination has been widely accepted as the strongest opposition. This means that Affirmative Action constitutes a negative discrimination against those non minorities white students. The preferential policies to ethnic minorities lead to the exclusion of many white students, regardless of their stronger ability and higher competitiveness. Many of these students have become victims of the history as they have to undertake the obligation of compensation for the ethnic minorities due to discrimination in the past.

Affirmative Action may even lead to a theory of stigma. During its implementation process, their supporters and opponents are divided according to races and colors. Gradually, some white opponents turn to accept Affirmative Action due to conscience. They accept it as compensation justice. With the black groups, some blacks fail in arguing for preferential treatments. They think that Affirmative Action gives the blacks an inferior label, denying their excellence in fair competitors through their own efforts and talents. The Affirmative Action label was found to negatively influence people’s competence (Heilman, Block & Lucas 1992). Thus this can lead to a sense of stigma, indication a violation of their personal dignity. More seriously, this may lead to constant self denial for the blacks. Those blacks failing in enjoying preferential treatments generally suffer no discrimination in history, so they also feel shameful with the policies of Affirmative Action.

Conclusion

Affirmative action is a controversial and often poorly understood policy (Crosby, Iyer & Sincharoen 2006). The implementation of Affirmative Action aims to make compensation justice for those people suffering from racial discrimination in history. But it has been seriously challenges as more and more states enact laws to prohibit the consideration of racial factor for college enrollment. The new trend also implied the change of fair values in the Affirmative Action. The implementation of equality protection has shifted from emphasizing the collective equality to the equal rights shared by citizen individuals. In modern society, after all, the realization of equality among individuals is essentially equality.

References

Burstein P. 1994. Equal Employment Opportunity: Labor Market Discrimination and Public Policy. New York: de Gruyter Aldine.

Crosby F. J., Cordova D. 1996. Words worth of wisdom: toward an understanding of affirmative action. J. Soc. Issues 52:33–49

Crosby, F. J., Iyer, A., & Sincharoen, S. (2006). Understanding affirmative action. Annual Review of Psychology, 57(1-2), 585.

Heilman, M. E., Block, C. J., & Lucas, J. A. (1992). Presumed incompetent? stigmatization and affirmative action efforts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 536-544.

Nittle N. K. (2017). 5 Key Events in Affirmative Action History.

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-affirmative-action-2834562

Richard A. P (1979). he Bakke Case and the Future of "Affirmative Action". California Law Review., 171-189.

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