Affirmative Action: Is It the Answer to Discrimination? Essay

This essay examines affirmative action, exploring its role in addressing past discrimination in education and employment. The author argues that affirmative action, while intended to rectify past injustices, can lead to new forms of discrimination based on gender and other factors, potentially creating an unfair system. The essay references various sources to support its claims and suggests alternative methods, such as equal employment opportunities, to achieve fairness. It concludes that affirmative action is not an effective solution to discrimination and can lead to incompetence. The essay focuses on the negative aspects of affirmative action and its potential for creating further inequalities, and it suggests alternative solutions.

Running head: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION 1
Affirmative action.
Student Name
Institution

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION 2
Affirmative refers to policies enacted by various institutions to favor the individuals who
are discriminated in relation to education and employment. In most countries and organizations,
the policies favor women, youth, and people living with disabilities. I do not agree that
affirmative action can be used to avoid past discrimination. Affirmative action itself encourages
discrimination as some people call it positive discrimination (Greenwald, & Pettigrew, 2014). In
case of education, a student may be denied a chance to join the institution of his/her choice
because he is a boy or a girl. This is not fair, and students should be admitted in various
institutions basing the admission criteria on their merits. The affirmative action sometimes
causes into some troubles (Hinrichs, 2014). For instance, admitting a student to an institution on
the basis of gender and not qualification will cause the student to struggle to compete with the
students admitted on the basis of their merits.
Even if we call affirmative action positive discrimination, that is still discrimination
because one person will be favored and another person treated unfairly due to his gender, age or
even race. Affirmative action will, therefore, solve discrimination issues while causing other
discrimination issues. Past discrimination can be remedied using other effective measures such
as equal employment opportunities for all the people (Long, 2007). Nowadays, there are fair
playing grounds for all individuals which can enable all the parties to compete effectively.
Children are given equal education, and therefore there is no need to use affirmative action to
elevate a group of the society. Affirmative action causes incompetence, and it should be avoided
by all means as it cannot remedy past discrimination effectively (MacInnis, 2014).

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION 3
References.
Greenwald, A. G., & Pettigrew, T. F. (2014). With malice toward none and charity for some:
Ingroup favoritism enables discrimination. American Psychologist, 69(7), 669.
Hinrichs, P. (2014). Affirmative action bans and college graduation rates. Economics of
Education Review, 42, 43-52.
Long, M. C. (2007). Affirmative action and its alternatives in public universities: What do we
know?. Public Administration Review, 67(2), 315-330.
MacInnis, L. (2014). A third wave approach to analyzing presumed incompetent. Berkeley J.
Gender L. & Just., 29, 406.