“You do not take a person who has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him up to the starting line, and then tell him that he’s free to race against all the others and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” These words, immortalized by President Lyndon B. Johnson in a speech supporting affirmative action, are as relevant today as they were when he spoke them in 1965.
It would be senseless to remove a program like affirmative action, which has benefited so many people; people who might not have otherwise gotten a chance to compete at the highest level. From the enslavement and torture of millions of African-Americans, to the wage oppression and discrimination towards Asian-Americans, to the genocide of the native people of this country, the United States has a long history of denying entire groups of people equality and basic human rights precisely on basis of their ethnicity. Affirmative action was put in place as a way to level the playing field between the oppressors and the oppressed.
I am in no way arguing for affirmative action to advance myself in future endeavors. As an upper middle-class white female, I would (and should, for that matter) be just about the last person to gain any advantage from the program. I simply believe that we must give formerly persecuted groups some leverage in the working world. It isn’t that we continue to oppress these people, but their growth in society has been stunted by our ancestors’ injustice. Obviously, sweeping generalizations are being made, but it is nearly impossible not to do so when addressing entire races in our country. However, it is extremely hard to deny that groups such as African-Americans and Native Americans have lesser standards of living, education, and career opportunities.
Affirmative action is not a blind sorting machine, distinguishing between whites and colored without taking into consideration anything but that. The ethnicity of a person does not automatically get them into an Ivy League school, or award them a high-paying job. Affirmative action is a legal tool given to institutions to correct what is demonstrated as inequality. Affirmative action ceases to exist once the group of people benefiting has risen to the high standards our country holds. Asian-Americans, for example once were beneficiaries of affirmative action programs. Now, however, they have reached (and even surpassed) the status quo for our country. And, accordingly, colleges and universities have stopped giving them the extra leverage. This is NOT reverse discrimination; it is simply our society accepting the fact that a group of people, once so unfairly treated, has climbed the cultural steps and is now on equal playing field.
There are unequal standards our society, and we must reward the people who have gone above and beyond their own tacit expectations.
