AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: PUBLIC OPINION VS. POLICY
When Justin Ketcham, a white college student from the suburbs, thinks
about affirmative action, he thinks about what happened when he sent
out letters seeking scholarships so he could attend Stanford University
after being accepted during his senior year of high school.The
organizations that wrote back told him their money was reserved for
women or minorities. To Americans like Ketcham, it's a matter of
fairness. The average white male will claim that it's not fair to
attempt to rebalance scales by balancing them the other way. Students
like Ketcham are also more likely to claim that affirmative action is a
program geared towards curtailing workplace prejudices that really
don't exist anymore.But when Hillary Williams, a black insurance
company manager from the inner-city, thinks about affirmative action,
she thinks about the time she had to train three consecutive white male
bosses for a job that no one even approached her about filling. To her,
it's also a question of fairness. African-Americans like Hillary feel
that there is just no other was besides affirmative action to level the
playing field in certain businesses.And so the disparity in public
opinion begins. A racially-divided America creates separate groups,
which "Affirmative Action issue taps a fundamental cleavage in
American Society" (Gamson and Modigliani 170)--each with their own view
of affirmative action on different sides of the line. Government
attempts to create policy based upon the voice of the people but
affirmative action seems to present an almost un-solvable dilemma.
Traditionally, it had been a policy that was greatly scrutinized for
its quotas and alleged unfairness towards Blacks, but at the same time
it had also been praised for its inherent ability to help minorities
gets jobs they deserve but could not obtain ...