The Stand For Affirmative Action - 1909 Words

Stand for Affirmative Action America has made progress on the issue of inequality but there are still unresolved conflicts. Slavery has long ended but bias against African Americans still exists even today. Affirmative action was created to deal with this issue. The purpose of affirmative action is to encourage diversity among everyone and also to give people of color equal opportunities. It allows university admissions officials or employers to take race, ethnicity, or gender into account when they make admission or hiring decisions. This solution is controversial because some people feel as though this policy gives African Americans an advantage and is thus in a way reverse racism. Critics also pose that allowing people into†¦show more content†¦After World War II psychologists realized that racially integrated combat units were reported less racial prejudice than their segregated counterparts. This leads to the idea that affirmative action needs to stay in place to ensure there will be interaction a mong different groups of people and therefore ultimately there will be better relations and understandings between groups. Although this is not determinative because after all, slaveholders in the United States constantly interacted with their slaves. But if the interaction takes place between groups of equal status– something affirmative action can help facilitate, according to it s proponents- social scientists predict that the contact will encourage tolerance. (Brown). This theory makes sense because the more opportunities there are for interaction, the more interactions will take place and therefore the more relationships and diversity there will be. Affirmative action sprung up from the Civil Rights movement of the 1950 s/60 s. It was first used as an executive order from President Kennedy in 1961. In 1964, the Civil Right Act banned discrimination based on race, sex, religion or national origin. A year later, President Johnson made an affirmative action policy and said that affirmative action is a way to compensate for slavery (Affirmative Action 2016). Minorities were excepted into universities to