Affirmative Action: Argument in Favor

Affirmative actions are the policies that are concerned with non-dominant groups, typically minority men or women of all races, which aim at promoting access to employment or education. Affirmative action desires to redress perceived or actual effects of current or past discrimination that is considered to be unfair and encourages public institutions such as police forces, hospitals, and universities to act as representatives of the entire population. This is achieved through recruitment programs that aim at having applicants from groups that are socio-politically disadvantaged.

Affirmative action enhances the merits that exist in any group of people by producing applicants who are most talented. This is because applicants are recruited based on how qualified they are and the experience they have but not because of the sex or racial group where they belong. For example, when Yale University was admitting students, the president said that the test scores of male applicants were dropping. Therefore, there was a need to expand the pool so that they can include women and get only men who have higher scores to be able to have applicants of better quality.

When affirmative action is used, the focus is shifted from individuals up to teams, and with clear organization goals, diverse teams are better. This is because affirmative action provides a shortcut to diversity which helps the teams to outperform others. Successful programs for affirmative action require resources and institutional commitment so that the available resources can be put into effective use without favor or discrimination on who should benefit or not.

Affirmative action increases the rates of admissions of minorities who are underrepresented in colleges. The under-representation is a result of social factors such as students coming from families with very few people who have higher education and therefore are not able to excel in their high school education. There is a students from communities that do not speak English regularly, making them have difficulty in writing and reading. Affirmative action allows candidates to be evaluated fairly by taking care of social inequalities that exist. Affirmative action is able to lower admission standards for minorities and balances academic disadvantages in those groups. Individuals who benefit are supposed to excel in academics relative to people from similar backgrounds.