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I. A historical analysis. 1. The efforts of blacks to obtain an education. II.
Examination of the current practice of affirmative action. 1. The affirmative action effort in higher education systems: a. the criticisms of affirmative action; b. the role of school officials in fulfilment of affirmative action programs; c.
affirmative action within selected institutions of higher education. III. A discussion of the current position of blacks. Should there be a distinction between African Americans and Black Immigrants in regards to Affirmative action at Ivy League colleges They say that the programs of affirmative action have been upheld as a remedy for past injustice. The historical grounds for discrimination based on race were slavery.
Thomas Jefferson was the author of the words about equality of all citizens. Thanks to the Constitution and its words that all men are equal in the eyes of our Creator, people started to defend their constitutional rights. Thus the Court constitute discrimination on race, only in 1954 the US Supreme Courts decision in Brown v. Board of Education marked an important point in the history of racial divisions in the United States. It made equal opportunity in education abolished sanctions for segregation by race. Affirmative action began forty years ago.
The Supreme Courts treatment appeared at that time when people began to understand their equal rights in the world. The most wildly discussed cases were about racial and sex discrimination. In 1964 - 1965, President Johnson came to the thought that it was not enough to remove legal barriers confronting minorities. It was needed to take affirmative action to help them overcome decades of prior discrimination.
So, on September 24, 1965, he issued an executive order to take affirmative action to recruit, higher and promote more racial minorities. Affirmative action has been created as a policy with the purpose to increase the opportunities for usually discriminated groups that are characterized by race, gender or physical disability. Affirmative action usually focuses on education, employment, government contracts, health care, or social welfare. The groups now regularly designated for favorable treatment are Black, Latinos and Native Americans. The programs have been praised for increasing minority access to education and professional careers. In colleges there are minority scholarship programs and advancement opportunities admissions.
These programs have been serving as a beacon of hope for American youths and the best demonstration of nation's commitment to including African-Americans in the American dream. But Affirmative action does not mean lowering standards of excellence nor does it mean that unqualified students will be graduated. According to the programs students from minorities are given an opportunity to receive additional training through seminars and conferences. It helps to strengthen their backgrounds and increase their profitability.
Race discrimination has more well-defined features. People can be treated differently because of their color of skin, ethnic traditions and customs, their way of behavior. Affirmative Action were expected to become neo-Reconstruction, but with the multiculturalism movement in the 1970 s, they became more an open embracing of diversity in all forms. This definition of diversity was not only limited to race.
It included gender, ethnicity, and, more recently, class, and nationality. All communities in American society have their own migration experiences; because America is considered to be "a nation of immigrants. " The African-American Migration Experience explains the extraordinary diversity of African Americans living in the United States today. African Americans, Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, Central Americans and South Americans of African descent, as well as Africans and Afro-Caribbeans born in Europe live side by side, each group bringing its specificities, culture, and sense of identity, common and not-so-common histories. But nowadays African-American community is in crisis. In the early 1970 s Shirley Wilcher, now the executive director of the American Association for Affirmative Action, had noticed a rise in the number of black students from Africa and the Caribbean, and a downturn in admissions of native blacks. Having examined the data, she came to conclusion that among students at 28 top U.
S. universities, about 27 percent were the representatives of black students of first- and second-generation immigrant origin. The data were about twice higher to the representative of the national population of blacks their age (13 percent). Within the Ivy League, immigrant-origin students made up 41 percent of black freshmen. But there was no a definitive answer why the change was happening. Camille Charles, a University of Pennsylvania professor, wrote in the American Journal of Education that "folks I know personally who have worked in admissions have told me that they weren't surprised. " Some people say that according to the data from a national survey of 1, 028 freshmen, a lot of black immigrant students had fathers with college or advanced degrees and native black students, as a rule, hadnt.
The others weer sure that the reason for high proportion of immigrant students was in how the students are perceived. They said that black immigrants were more polite, less hostile, more solicitous; while native blacks were perceived in the opposite fashion. But there were a lot of opponents to the idea. Some opponents say that black Americans have been raised in a country that coddles them from birth, and tells them they are responsible for nothing.
As such, there is an opinion that many black Americans are spoiled, difficult and obnoxious. Immigrant blacks havent been coddled like american ones have, so they dont have an attitude. Also, black immigrants are usually the cream of the crop in their own country in terms of intelligence and skill. During 1980 - 2000, there has been the immigrant influx. Thats why the rise in incarceration rates among blacks with a high school education or less was noticed. The rates were about 10 percent.
The issue of native vs. immigrant blacks took place at Harvard in 2004. Lani Guinier, a Harvard law school professor, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. , the a historian who is chairman of Harvard's African and African-American studies department pointed out that a majority of attendants were of African or Caribbean origin. Gates and Guinier refered on demographic information in the "Black Guide to Life at Harvard. " The BSA published a survey of 70 percent of black undergraduates. Prominent Harvard University professors stated that selective admissions at schools, according to affirmative action programs, leave behind too many black American students; because many immigrants seemingly qualify for the privileged status of refugee. Most of all a majority of black students at Ivy League colleges consists either immigrants or children of immigrants.
A lot of teachers and professionals were shocked by the statements made by the Harvard educators. Harvard became a good case for study for educators as well as politicians. They say that how the mechanics of quotas drive the politics of immigration; because, for example, Harvard University has a relatively fixed quota of 8 percent for blacks. It means that newcomers, for instance, from Nigeria elite or from Jamaica's mulatto middle class has more opportunity to enter the educational establishment than black Americans.
Thats why a lot of educators are protesting affirmative action for black immigrants. But, paradoxically, they dont mention quotas for Hispanic immigrants, for example. 2. Debates has exposed something that many black educators at top schools have known for a long time. Some now argue that affirmative action programs were intended to correct a long-standing inequality in the American education system and that they should benefit the descendants of black slaves who suffered from the effects of past injustices, not recent immigrants or their children. But for decades there hasnt been found an answer. In the book titled The Source of the River Douglas Massey wrote that a majority of the black student population at elite schools were immigrants and children of immigrant blacks and in the early 2000 the amount was 41 percent.
Mr. Massey thought that the reason was in family background and attitude toward education, "Recent immigrants and children of immigrants are way over-represented in the black student populations at elite schools because immigrants are a self-selected population. They tend to come from middle to upper-class echelons of society and have a different family background and attitude toward education. They tend to do better in school and end up at the good schools. " Douglas Massey stated that those facts explained why African immigrants or their children were principal beneficiaries of affirmative action in university admissions. Frankly speaking, there are a lot of schools where admissions officers arent aware of the racial and ethnic breakdown of their black students. Because race is self-reported on admissions forms, which follow federal guidelines on racial and ethnic breakdown, schools have no way of determining the ancestral background of their student bodies.
The forms that are used in identifying race have no specific check box breaking down the race and ethnic origin of blacks. On college campuses black students debated what constitutes an authentic African or African-American identity. Mr. Massey said, "It might unleash some bitterness in African-American circles about who ought to benefit from affirmative action. " All members of the dispute, teachers, students and officials, agree that agreed the subject of native vs. immigrant background remains sensitive.
The debates provoked the other questions: when the term 'black community's hold be used and who should be included in this description. Despite similarities, however, one difference surprises that neither the research authors nor the media addressing the research considered was what "blackness" means to black Americans vs. black immigrants residing in America. But if there is no certain difference why African students should...
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Research essay sample on Affirmative Action Programs Racial And Ethnic
