Affirmative Action: Public Opinion Vs. Policy
...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 otherwise. So how do we
reach a "happy medium" so-to-speak? In American political culture, it appears
as though...
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