Affirmative Action
             Affirmative Action efforts were started in 1964 to end the long history of
             overlooking qualified people of color and women from higher education. Affirmative
             Action sets standards for a business or office of admissions, so that a white man does not
             have the upper-hand over an equally or greater educated minority. The initial way the
             government tried to justify Affirmative Action was to develop a human resource
             approach: first identifying the problem, which is racism then establishing the solution
             (Phillips 67).
             The intent of Affirmative Action helps cut down discrimination in the work place
             and in schools, despite the fact that some believe that affirmative action is a form of
             reverse discrimination. In contrast, the first goal of Affirmative Action was to help
             people who were poor or badly educated, elevating them to positions for which they were
             not objectively qualified (Buckley 95). Cousens, author of Public Civil Rights Agencies
             and Fair Employment indicates that the Affirmative Action techniques have the
             advantage of not only persuading employers not to discriminate when hiring or accepting,
             but to expand employment and educational opportunities for minority groups (22).
             Therefore, Affirmative Action is legitimate because it does reduce discrimination in the
             work place and related areas such as University acceptance of college students. In the
             end, it should in no way be abolished.
             However, Affirmative action is highly controversial. Right now Proposition 209,
             in California which bans all programs involving race and sex preferences run by the state,
             has passed but it will not be put into total action due to some questions of
             constitutionality (Ayres 34). The law will start slowly first, ending Affirmative Action in
             the schools of California, leading up to the abolishment of Affirmative Ac...