Detrimental Affects of Affirmative Action Essay -- Argumentaive

Detrimental Affects of Affirmative Action Beginning in the 1960's several government programs were introduced in order to ensure equality in the job market. However, these programs accomplished the exact opposite by judging potential employees by their race and gender and excluding possibly more qualified persons. This is not the plight of women or African-Americans, but that of the white male. Affirmative Action is not only an ineffective method for compensating for past disadvantages, but also widens the racial and gender gaps in today’s society. President John F. Kennedy was the first person to use the words â€Å"Affirmative Action† in a speech in which he expressed desire to create equal rights. Later, in 1961, he created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that explicitly states that employers, specifically construction businesses employed by the government, must use a system that ensured workers would be hired â€Å"without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin† (Eisaguirre 29). Though a step in the right direction, this vague definition left it open to further debate and thus Affirmative Action was allowed to change. Over the next decade, through influence from the former President Kennedy, several new bills and laws were passed that gave minorities more protective rights concerning employment, housing, and voting. Such bills included the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and the Fair Housing Act in 1968. Finally, in 1969, then President Richard Nixon implemented the first actual Affirmative Action plan, called the Philadelphia Plan, requiring exact percentages of minorities hired (Eisaguirre 31). Though there were several smaller cases concerning this new governm... ...erican incomes were skyrocketing and becoming closer and closer to that of Caucasians. In 1970, incomes reached its highest percentage and since then has fallen dramatically. Also during the 1960s, African-American enrollment in colleges was increasing significantly in comparison to the population. Since then, it has been stagnant (Sowell 130). Affirmative Action must be stopped immediately if our society wishes to become a utopia for all walks of life. Hiring people based on such information not only hurts those who are not hired in the short run, but it also damages the new employee even more. Besides teaching one person they are not good enough because of things they cannot control, it teaches the other that sub-par work is good enough. This begins the snowball affect, thus causing millions to learn values that are not beneficial for society as a whole.