Pt1420 Unit 2 Assignment 2

Affirmative Action is one of the many social issues facing America today. Affirmative action was signed into place in 1961 by President Kennedy and allows minority groups or people who face discrimination to become employed or get an education that is equal to that of a white male. Groups that Affirmative Action aims to help are women, blacks, Latinos, and people with disabilities. While these policies were signed to slowly rid the workforce and schools from discrimination, it hurts people who do not face discrimination, specifically whites. Many white men and women lose special opportunities to work or go to college because of certain standards that the Affirmative Action laws require. Universities and the military require a certain number of minorities in order to meet the standards and have a more diverse atmosphere. An example of this is the California V. Bakke supreme court case of 1978.

In 1996 the largest population consisted of people aged 30-50, there were not as many people in the dependency load. In 2011, there were more people aged 40-65, who are getting close to retirement. There are not as many babies being born today as previous years because people are choosing to not have as many children. The baby boomers are getting older and there will soon be more people in the dependency load as the workforce. In 2011 there were more people ages 85 and up because nowadays people have been able to live longer.

Were looking for a number that’s divisible by 7 and has 1 left over when divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Is there more than one answer?

Affirmative Action remains one of the more complicated and controversial topics dealt with in American society. Affirmative Action is an action or policy designed to protect specific groups who suffer from discrimination, and provide them with programs and special opportunities. These government or private programs were designed to set right historical injustices towards the members of these groups who have suffered things like employment and educational disadvantages from racial discrimination. The goal for these actions are to redress past wrong doings by fixing things like inequalities in employment and pay, as well as increasing opportunities for education. By achieving this, the outcome would restore equal access and opportunity in favor of the members of these groups. These groups generally consist of certain minorities that have suffered from social ills such as slavery and segregation.

Affirmative action was put in place to give minority groups like African Americans, Latinos, and women, who were historically discriminated against in the past, special access to jobs and education. And I can understand the purpose of this several years ago; there were very little to no opportunities for these groups. Affirmative action provided programs to these groups that weren’t available otherwise. But in the 21st century, things are very different. Although racism is still an issue in our country, it’s nothing like it used to be. And there are far more opportunities

Affirmative action was introduced into the United States to eliminate discrimination in hiring and enrollment for minority groups. It was used to eradicate all the countless years of discrimination that minorities had faced. Affirmative Action provides equal opportunities for all Americans. Without this program, social and economic inequalities would still exist. Reason being is because companies will still neglect to integrate minorities. The main goal of affirmative action was to provide minority groups the equal opportunity to achieve a successful lifestyle and by doing this, it shows that affirmative action is required in America. To be able to end the countless acts of discrimination in education, the workforce and amongst the society in whole we must continue to enforce and embrace Affirmative Action.

Consequently, students who have been admitted into colleges under Affirmative Action are usually deemed as inadequate to handle the school. Most of these students are chosen by ethnicity and race rather than how well they do in school, for instance, if they are not properly prepared and ready to work hard they will initially fail the class or classes before their first final. When a student is admitted into a school due to their ethnicity, it fulfills the exact opposite objective that Martin Luther King Jr. had once believed would happen, and that was to have a society that was not “color-blind,” instead race awareness increases rather than promoting a society in favor of having color-blind justice. Another way supporters would argue that it is needed is that it aids students to study areas that they might not have thought about even touching ground in, however this could also affect the student, on account of them not knowing much about that area, in short leaving them unprepared and set up for failure. As stated in ‘Arguments for and Against Affirmative Action’ states, “It destroys the idea of a meritocracy and instead puts race as the dominant factor in admissions and hiring procedures,” in other words, saying that the group of people whose progress is usually based on their ability and talent is being comprehensively overlooked because their race is becoming the principal aspect on how a college determines whether or not a student is admissible in the

Proponents of 227 from the READ Institute argue that, the test scores from 1998-2000, show that minority English language learning students in California have done better on the SAT 9 test than those in bilingual education had done before (Mora). Kenji Hakuta, shows in his article, Points on SAT-9 Performance and Proposition 227, “test scores rose in districts in California that kept bilingual education, as well as in districts that never had bilingual education” (Hakuta). In addition,

Affirmative Action is meant to eliminate any barriers that prevents groups that are discriminated against from having equal opportunities within education or employment. Affirmative Action was used to enroll and hire African Americans and other minorities to ensure that they are increasingly becoming affiliated with institutions and different organizations/business. By doing so it allowed for there to be diversity and gives the impression of equal opportunities, but not necessarily equality. Affirmative Action in a sense lead to a domino effect which made it look more convincing that equality was in arms reach. First institutions started factoring in race to help increase the number of African Americans that were enrolled, then funding and

In education, all affirmative action programs truly do is give the opportunity of higher education to those who would ordinarily not have the chance, but they do not crack open the books, do the work, or pass the tests. The real work is done by the students who are given the chance to grow and learn within the walls of some of the most prestigious universities in the United States. It is an opportunity some of them may not have had in different circumstances. The term “affirmative action” actually first appeared in the National Labor Relations Act, better known as the Wagner

Affirmative action is a way to help compensate for the fact that, due to many years of oppression, some races "started late in the race." Again, it helps level the playing field.

Many would agree that Affirmative Action was meant to be a positive plan that helps compensate for the years of slavery and oppression. There are multiple ways that it accomplishes this, one of which gives certain students a “needed” boost in college admissions. Those who disagree with Affirmative Action would agree that it automatically assumes all blacks to be poor and all whites to be rich. Although Affirmative Action fails to notice it, believe it or not, there are rich black families out there whose children don’t need extra benefits and there are poor white families whose children could use those benefits instead.

Affirmative action has been a controversial matter in education for various reasons. Those who oppose affirmative action, often refer to it as “reverse discrimination.” Whites feel as if affirmative action makes society unjust for whites. They argue that being white will impair you from succeeding in life with affirmative action in place. I find this Ludacris, for centuries minorities have been oppressed and not able to succeed in life. Affirmative action only even’s the playing field to allow the minority group to have a chance at a well off life. In the case The University of Texas vs. Fisher; Abigail Fisher felt as if being white affected her admission process and that minorities took more “worthy” and “qualified” persons’ spots, due to

Proposition 227 appeared as part of a large group of laws aimed the sudden influx of Hispanic and Asian immigrants into the US in the 1980s. Those in support of this law applied the arguments that these children didn’t need to belong to the romanticized notion of “dual-culture” and that in order to become part of America and its standardized culture, the English language was necessary (Battistella 2005). While this argument of obtaining the standard language of a society in order to fit in and provide a more secure future is not unique, what this proposition suggested was entirely different. Schools had always been required by law to make their lessons understandable to “limited English Proficiency” (LEP) students. However, up until this point, schools took this as giving LEP students different services to learn English, such as special materials designed at a simpler English grammatical level or teaching of academic subjects in a native language (Battistella 2005). Proposition 227 proposed a restructuring of these programs such that LEP students were placed into a short-term (i.e. no longer than a year), intensive English immersion class taught solely in English. Once they had finished this transitional class, they were then transferred to mainstream English-language classrooms (Ballotpedia n.d.).

In Ron Unz article “Bilingual Education Programs Fail Our Students”, he states that proposition 227 had required all California public schools to teach their children English by placing those non-English speakers in an intensive sheltered English immersion program in order to teach them English as quickly as possible so that they could then be placed in a regular English class. The issue with this was that children were unable to grow as fast as they needed to. Teaching them in English creates more of a struggle for the child. The purpose of the class is to learn English so using only English to teach would not be the best solution. In “Prop. 58 would undo limitations on bilingual education” written by Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, he explains how Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, dean of the University of California Los Angeles Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, states that proposition 227 was a political response due to the failings of the bilingual education who rather than finding a solution, eliminated bilingual education as a whole. So, rather than working to fix the issue, supporters of 227 sought out to eliminate it as a whole, causing many