Question

Can a negative affect of Affirmation action be that there is discrimination against those who had nothing to do with the past inequalities?

Answer 1

Affirmation actions refer to a term coined by the president John F Kennedy in 1961 when he urged employees to employ applicants and to treat their employees without any regards to their race, creed, color or national origin.

This further led to employers hiring people based on the very same race, creed, color to undo the past doings. By giving jobs to the Afro-Americans, or immigrants, the thought behind was that they were undoing the past mistakes of the country by giving preferential treatment to them.

In this regard, affirmation action does have negative effect on those people who had nothing to do with the past inequalities but yet had to suffer due to the preferential treatment given to those who were wronged.

A better way to bring affirmation action into practice would be to help the backward classes by providing them with better educational, housing and health facilities to bring equality in the society.

Instead of giving jobs, there should be funds provided so that the starting point for all the classes is equal and no class suffers due to lack of fundings provided to them.

The next step would be to make sure that there is no preferential treatment given to any employee no matter what the past mistakes were. Giving undue preferences should not be a way to bring equality to society. Making all the classes get the same facilities in their lives is the way to do the right thing. And in the ends, while hiring employees, the job should be given to the right candidate instead of the ones whose forbearers were wronged in the past.