Sacred Heart Cathedral's student-run newspaper. We've got issues.

The Emerald

Sacred Heart Cathedral's student-run newspaper. We've got issues.

The Emerald

Sacred Heart Cathedral's student-run newspaper. We've got issues.

The Emerald

Affirmative Action

Charlie Herndon ’14, Guest Writer

Affirmative action has become a controversial policy as a result of the preferential treatment received by underprivileged persons in the admissions and employment processes.  Many believe that university admissions and employment processes should be founded solely upon merit, academic ability, and other more objective qualifications, as opposed to race and economic displacement.  Others argue that affirmative action is necessary to counter the effects of societal discrimination, to reduce the historic deficit of disfavored races and to obtain the economic and academic benefits of a diverse community.  Though I am white and consider myself to be privileged, I believe that affirmative action should continue.

Affirmative action must be maintained in order to reduce the historic deficit of minorities and other underprivileged persons.  It is a great folly to create a society which does not consider the backgrounds of its peoples and judges them solely upon objective accomplishments.  This is because those of great merit are typically those of great privilege.  Should the walls of racial, economic, and societal privilege be maintained in the absence of affirmative action, this elite group will continue to occupy its affluent position at the cost of the impoverished and deprived.  I do not mean to say that the underprivileged are inferior, but rather that they deserve an opportunity equal to that received by the entrenched social elite.  Take for example the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave applicants free acres of land for independent farms.  This act was passed in order that poor farmers could compete with the plantation economy of the South, which employed great wealth and slaves as an economic advantage.  The Homestead Act was an affirmative action program of its own, giving land and an opportunity to the underprivileged.  It allowed for the aggrandizement of the lower classes, but this program has ironically given Northern whites a privilege to the present day.  This is because the land was largely made available to whites, rather than to the black slaves, Asians, Hispanics, Native Americans, et cetera.  Today, 93 million people have descended from the original homesteaders, 98% percent of whom are white.  So it can be seen that these white descendants currently enjoy economic welfare and opportunities exclusive to their color, whereas Blacks and Hispanics are currently 60% more likely to be declined a loan for a house.  In a world in which whites enjoy a historic privilege and the colored minorities suffer from a historic deficit, affirmative action should be maintained in order to install an equality of opportunity and condition across the races.

The case of Sweatt v. Painter best exemplifies the necessity to combat social discrimination and to create diverse education.  In Sweatt v. Painter the Supreme Court contemplates the separate but equal clause of Plessy v. Ferguson and how it applies to the equality and the efficacy of separate educational facilities.  In a mandate for integrated education, the court ruled that “separate” schools failed to qualify because of quantitative differences in terms of facilities and other intangible factors.  Due to the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, integrated education became a necessity.  In consideration of the separation between the economic classes and ethnic groups, students of all diverse backgrounds should receive employment and scholarships in order to receive equal protection.  In an age when initial wealth is the determining factor of resulting success, affirmative action serves as the grand equalizer to the separation of the economic, ethnic, and social groups.

While it could be argued that affirmative action is a program of reverse racism set to combat traditional privilege, I believe that reverse discrimination is required so as to achieve equality of opportunity and condition across the races.  Reverse racism is required to combat the historic deficit, societal discrimination, and to create communal diversity “for it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up” (MLK).

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