A 4 page paper providing a broad literature review of current views of affirmative action, followed by a fictional university president's proposal that his university drop all racial and ethnic considerations from the selection process in favor of recruiting low-income urban students. This was the approach of Texas A&M in 2005, when that school was able to increase African American enrollment by 57 percent. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
Name of Research Paper File: CC6_KSaffAct06.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
be said either for or against affirmative action, most feel strongly about it in one way or another. There is building evidence that programs in place for many years
have not been successful in achieving their original end goals. Literature Review On the one hand, opponents of continued affirmative action policies hold
that "the use of race-conscious policies to remedy past discrimination is contraindicative of a color-blind society" (Awad, Cokley and Ravitch, 2005; p. 138). On the other, the theoretical base
for affirmative action rests in "distributive justice, which is why liberals and progressives tend to look benevolently on it while conservatives and libertarians consider it a travesty" (Berube, 2005; p.
27). Katz, Stern and Fader (2005) use women - of all colors and ethnicities - as an example of the actual results of
affirmative action, rather than the perceived results of being "more fair" than hiring or recruitment practices based on merit and achievement. Katz, Stern and Fader (2005) compare women to
African Americans. Over the years, both groups have "increased their social citizenship" ... Yet, they remain unequal ... they earn less than men, end up in occupational ghettos, bump
up against glass ceilings, and find themselves, in relation to men, as poor as ever" (Katz, Stern and Fader, 2005; p. 65). Black
conservative sociologist Thomas Sowell has been promoting this same argument for thirty years, not in terms of women but in terms of African Americans. Sowell maintains that the implemented
form of affirmative action policies since the 1960s is far beyond the race-neutral language of the Civil Rights Act and LBJs executive order 11246" (Berube, 2005; p. 27). That