Should the federal government eliminate affirmative action?
Affirmative action is a term that initiates many debates in the United States. Citizens tend to be divided in views with respect to this issue. Many feel that racial and gender discriminations (among others) still exist and pose grave problems within the labor market. Others, however, believe that as America begins the new millennium, racial prejudice and other forms of discrimination are less salient within the occupational structure and therefore affirmative action is no longer necessary. Due to the theory advanced by William Wilson, I believe that the federal government should restructure affirmative action so that it is no longer applicable to the work force, however, areas such as universities and other institutions of that caliber should still be held to the policy of affirmative action. The theoretical framework advanced by Wilson in "The Declining Significance of Race" is that as America moved from the pre-industrial to the post industrial and now the modern era, minorities (specifically African Americans) are becoming more polarized, which brings with it a very thick stratification of social classes with
Many of these low income families are very poorly educated and even the schools their children attend lack the proper resources to appropriately educate the children of these low income families, so of course they will not have the talents necessary to enter the higher part of the labor market that would allow them to be upwardly mobile. This is further explained in the following exert, The recent Mobility patterns of blacks lend strong support to the view that economic class is clearly more important than race in predetermining job placement and occupational mobility. This community changed from nearly all blacks in America being slaves to the present time where there exist the working class blacks and the middle or upper class blacks. Even though blacks are disproportionately represented in the low economic status of America, this is not necessarily racially charged anymore. This would them prevent them from entering the section in the labor market that would allow for the betterment of their social class standings. In fact, "talented and educated blacks, like talented and educated whites, will continue to enjoy the advantages and privileges of their class status (Wilson 153). Their economic status comes from such things as low educational level and poor family structure. Therefore affirmative action is no longer needed in America's occupational structure because the blacks who are being denied access into the cooperate world are not admitted in for the same reasons that some whites are not admitted in, and that is due to their socioeconomic status. In the economic realm, then, the black experience has moved historically from economic racial oppression experienced by virtually all blacks to economic subordination for the black underclass. This is due to blacks finally entering the job market during the industrial period and slowly becoming upwardly mobile. Wilson further argues that do to this mobility of blacks in their social class, race became less of an issue in entering the job market but rather that one's social class became the defining factor. Those that are from a low income social class may understand the perplexity of the situation and attempt to do resolve this issue by studying hard in school to further educate themselves, however, due to various prejudices that still exist they may not be admitted into various schools or universities.
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Acceptance Essays
