Civil Rights Initiative
March 22, 2008
With elections just around the corner, an issue that may sway voters one way or another is a new initiative to ban affirmative action. Ward Connerly, head of the American Civil Rights Coalition, works to stop preferential treatment based on race and gender. He claims that affirmative action causes dissent and that it is unfair to think that a, “Caucasian student might be denied a college slot in favor of a black student with a lower grade-point average.” Connerly is of African-American and American-Indian heritage. This ballot initiative, called the Civil Rights Initiative, has already been employed in California, Michigan, and Washington and it is currently being proposed in the states of Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. Connerly believes that integration should not be forced because it will take place on its own, naturally.
This article is a good example of how many people seem to believe that the need for affirmative action is no longer needed in our society. When affirmative action was first created, it was meant to be temporary. The issues of reverse-discrimination, awarding people based on merit, and causing resentment between races help feed this new movement against affirmative action. These issues pose the idea of whether we still need affirmative action in our society and if the presence of it causes even more tension between races.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/07/affirmative.action/index.html#cnnSTCText
March 28, 2008 at 6:20 pm
I can understand you opinion on how Affirmative Action is demeaning to the hard work and effort everyone puts into their ideals of success. The belief in reverse discrimination could also be a reason for the tension created by such an Act. In my opinion, I believe that Affirmative Action is necessary. I do not believe that every person is on a level playing field; the opportunity for some is not, at all, afforded to the many others that are either secluded or made invisible by the traits that make them who they are. Affirmative Action may have first been built on the ideas of race, but it is also for the other minority groups that are hindered through historic and present day exclusion.
March 31, 2008 at 10:25 pm
A persons right to be in college should have more to do with the work they do in school not the color of their skin.