Recently I have thought about how so many people misunderstand the purpose of anti-discrimination laws. After the Civil War, Congress passed the 14th Amendment, which defines who is a citizen of the U.S. and that they have all of the same rights as everyone else. You can find the 14th Amendment at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution. It's intent seems clear to me. I don't understand where people got the idea that we should segregate according to race and allow certain privileges to the minorities that are "underprivileged". Everyone has the potential to make something of themselves. Let's get rid of the "underprivileged" idea.
Let's see how it works in society today. Because of affirmative action, the education and work place are screwed up. The problem is that it's essentially ignoring someone that is qualified for a position and replacing them with someone with less qualifications than that person. Not to say that people in the minority are all less qualified than the majority, because I personally know some very qualified individuals that are in the minority. Let me share an example of the problem with affirmative action. If I were to apply to a very competitive school because my grades are within the top 1% of high school graduates, I could possibly get looked over by the school just because of my race. In my place could be put someone that is within the top 10% of high school graduates. Research has been done to show that those students in the top 10% are unable to maintain the same competitiveness as the kids who were the top 1%. They then don't even apply for a less demanding school, so they go without a college education. This happens in the workplace too. Is this fair to those people that get skipped over because of their race?
I was also looking over some of the Civil Rights Acts throughout the years, and from what I can tell, they are only trying to prevent discrimination. They are not saying, "Let's make sure that there are a certain number of 'underprivileged' individuals in each sector of our country." Instead, they say that we don't want you to discriminate and not deny somebody a service, job, or education because of their race. Or even give somebody something because of their race. But isn't that what they've done essentially? By requiring employers and schools to hire or accept people with lower qualifications, they make it harder on everybody. Employers have to deal with discriminatory lawsuits, certain hiring questions, and someone always looking over their shoulder.
Why not just choose the most qualified individual? I know that in business I would want the most qualified person working for me. I wouldn't care what race they were as long as they produced good quality work. Wouldn't you? If you want to look at any of the Civil Rights Acts, you can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act. I just hope that we can get rid of these stupid affirmative action laws and do the thing that makes sense, taking race out of the equation.
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