Philosophy

Affirmative action was established in the mid 1960s in the United States to ensure that minorities were not oppressed and were given opportunities at par with the majority. In the US, this meant that people of African - American descent and women were given special quotas. Policy required that these minorities be given jobs and admissions to college on the basis of their race or gender rather than what their academic credentials demanded. As more minority groups were granted these quotas, the majority had a case that they were losing out on opportunities they felt they deserved more. Thus emerged the term, reverse discrimination defined as, discrimination in hiring, college admissions, etc. directed against members of certain social or racial groups, as white males, thought of as being dominant or having benefited from past discrimination against minority groups who are now favored, often as a result of affirmative action (yourdictionary.com).

The case for oppressed minorities was truly warranted when Affirmative action was first brought into effect in the 1960s (Warburton and Singer). The state was obliged to bring in this doctrine given the less than happy plight of these minority groups. As an Indian politician aptly puts it, Equality of opportunity has two different and distinct concepts. There is a conceptual distinction between a non-discrimination principle and affirmative action under which the state is obliged to provide a level playing-field to the oppressed classes (The Hindu). However, in the present scenario, it is clear that our society has come a long way and affirmative action is no longer needed. A group of 20 white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut sued over a workplace ruling that issued no promotions on the basis that no African American was qualified to be promoted (CNN). The case later moved to the Supreme Court, being asked to decide if there was a continued need to provide special treatment for minorities. The court ruled in favor of the white firefighters. The city rejected the test results solely because the higher scoring candidates were white, wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority. Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employers reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions. From this ruling, it is clear that reverse discrimination is a process very much in action in the present clime and there is a serious cause for Affirmative action to be lifted completely. The greatest evidence of the advances made by our society is the fact that an African - American heads the most powerful nation on earth currently.