Equality in Opportunity

America was built from racism. Our founding fathers owned slaves, who in turn provided these white men prestige and income through their hard work and free labor. For centuries this disparity continued, even after slavery was officially abolished in 1865. A century later, after little progress was made in race equality, the government decided to step in to enact a number of measures. For instance, affirmative action was intended to help provide equal opportunities in housing, employment, and college admissions.

While it is easy to say that American society should eliminate racism in our modern world, the solution is not easy as it sounds. The root of racism lies within our brain and is a basic result of a survival function that every animal relies upon: stereotyping. By taking in information about a specific person or place, our brain typically assumes that anything similar in that aspect would be similar in all other ways as well. This is obviously a logical fallacy, but something that commonly cannot be avoided within ourselves, much less society.

Another issue is that humans like familiarity. Since people are more familiar with themselves than anyone else, “we tend to be close friends with people who mirror us demographically, culturally, intellectually, politically, and professionally” (Thompson 288). This is true when finding friends at school or navigating work force camaraderie, which creates pockets of different races segregating of their own free will. For example, in The Other Wes Moore, both Wes Moore’s hung out with backstreet drug dealing kids who made up their community and were leading them down the wrong path as teenagers. What set them apart was that the author was sent away by his family to military school, where he was able to turn his life around and gained a new perspective by being thrown into an unfamiliar, life-altering situation (Moore). Much like his family’s intervention, affirmative action was the government’s way of trying to turn society around by forcing needed changes.

An example of racial groups congregating together and turning into something racist is found in Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun. In the story, the Younger family, a black, lower-class family, were trying to move into a white, middle-class neighborhood. In response to their efforts, Mr. Linder went to their Southside Chicago apartment to try to bribe them out of their intended move to his neighborhood. He had gotten together with others from the community to make a deal; they would buy the house from them at a higher price so they could make a bit of money off the deal. Mr. Linder tells them, “that for the happiness of all concerned…Negro families are happier when the live in their own communities” (Hansberry 553). Although the Youngers considered the offer because they could have used that money, they did not take it because they refused to be run off by racists who were making assumptions about their character and future impact on a particular neighborhood. In the end, this example shows what kind of effort people will go to to protect what they consider in their best interest, not necessarily what is fair or right for society as a whole.

Cases like this dot our American society fairly regularly for generations. And in an effort to amend these past racial imbalances, the government decided to implement affirmative action in the early to mid-1960s. Through Presidential and Congressional efforts, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson asserted the civil rights laws alone were not enough to wipe out discrimination. President Johnson made a speech in 1965 that said, "You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: 'now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.' You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe you have been completely fair…” These government efforts started in the employment sector by requiring contractors to document their efforts on considering qualified minority applicants. Soon after, it also included women. They were controversial and difficult efforts to apply, but the government saw them as a necessary consideration to equal the playing field that was dominated by white men.

Over time, affirmative action has been quantified as a quota system and as reverse discrimination, two terms that are still debatable in an evolving society. Several court cases were taken to the Supreme Court on college admissions processes and whether schools could consider race as a factor in admission. While quota numbers were shot down, the court did backup the ability of school to use affirmative action to make a more diverse student body. Not all states and universities agreed with this, but overall, this policy is still highly regarded.

Many say that affirmative action is an outdated and unnecessary process. I say, take a look around. This process is needed until our universities and our white collar positions are more representative of our population as a whole. For instance, in Texas, we should be seeing higher numbers of Hispanics in college enrollment, and as teachers and business managers. With white males having been dominate in white collar jobs in the past, “preexisting inequities [must be] corrected or otherwise taken into account [today so that] color-blind policies do not” reinforce racial inequality, but rather levels the playing field (Ten). We need to remember that “affirmative action is an imperfect tool designed to help eliminate racial and sexual barriers to access, promotion, and success in the workplace and in college admission” (Kirmmse).




Works Cited

Hansberry, Lorraine. Lorraine Hansberry's A Rasin in the Sun. New York: French., 1984. Print.

Kirmmse, Judy, and Yalidy Mercedes. "Support & Opposition." Connecticut College. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.

Moore, Wes. The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates. New York: Random House Group, 2010. Print.

"Ten Myths About Affirmative Action." UnderstandingPrejudice.org. Ed. Scott Plous. 2003. Web. 21 Feb. 2016.

Thompson, Clive. Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better. New York: Penguin Group, 2014. Print.