Essay On Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action Affirmative action is a phrase used to describe attempts to redress past discrimination by giving groups that have been discriminated against an advantage in allocating opportunities, such as jobs and admittance to colleges and universities. When affirmative action was first established over fifty years ago, the intended beneficiaries were African-Americans, but since that time, it has been used to help other groups that have experienced discrimination, such as women, Native Americans and Hispanics. When it was established, affirmative action’s goal was to eliminate vast differences in the unemployment rate, income and poverty between African-Americans and white Americans. However, while affirmative action has been a feature …show more content…
In addition, as described more below, affirmative action has generated fierce criticism, not only by those who are harmed by it, but also by individual African-Americans who have benefited from it, and the questions regarding its constitutionality are so serious that 50 years after it was first implemented, there remains a serious risk that the Supreme Court will rule that affirmative action is prohibited by the United …show more content…
Bakke, which was decided in 1978. Allan Bakke, a 35 year old white man, sued the University of California Medical School at Davis because the school rejected him twice, but African-American applicants with lesser qualifications were accepted because the school reserved 16 out of its 100 spots for “qualified” minorities. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court held that strict quota systems based on race are unconstitutional and Bakke was admitted to the University. However, the Supreme Court held that it was not unconstitutional for race to be a factor in admission to universities as long “as constitutional limitations protecting individual rights [are] not be