Episode Recording -- "Affirmative Action"

Hello and welcome to Phillips for the podcasting history, where we will dive into the significant

and often contentious topic of affirmative action. Now first off, what does affirmative action

mean? Affirmative action refers to policies and practices designed to promote equal opportunity

in education and employment, particularly for historically marginalized groups like racial

minorities and women at its peak, it would be applied from college admissions all the way to job

applications.Affirmative action got its start during the civil rights movement in the 1960s as a response to the

ongoing discrimination and inequality that certain groups like African Americans faced.

Following these following this, several executive orders were issued to establish affirmative

action programs aimed at actively recruiting and hiring under representented individuals. The

main one being executive order 11246 signed by President London B. Johnson.

It was instituted in 1965, and according to Honingman, required certain federal contractors and

subcontractors with at least 50 employees and $50,000 in contracts to implement affirmative

action plans to prevent employment discrimination. What this means is, this way, the individuals

who had been mistreated and discriminated against for so long could now have a fair chance at

education and and employment in America. To set the stage for affirmative action, the civil rights

movement during the civil rights movement in the 19 of the 1960s, America witnessed a

profound struggle against racial injustice and inequality.

Iconic iconic leaders emerged during this period, most specifically, Dr. Martin King jr at the

forefront. He advocated for nonviolent protests and equality. Dr. King's vision for a society

where individuals are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin,

became a rallying cry for millions fighting against the deep racism in America's society.

Unfortunately, this fight was met with very strong resistance. An example in figurehead for the

millions of white conservative Americans pushing segregation was Alabama governor George

Wallace. In fact, just as the civil rights movement began to gain unprecedented strength in the

South, more specifically in Alabama, Wallace made his firm stance on segregation, saying,

segregation now segregation to morrow segregation forever, with millions agreeing and standing

with leaders like Wallace, civil rights and equality faced a strong defense and setback, often eventaking forms of violence. in response to the climate of this opposition, President London B.

Johnson highlighted the importance of a affirmative action.

By mandating affirmative action, the U. government aimed not only to fix the injustices of the

past, but also to address the ongoing resistance to racial inequality that threatened to undermine

all of the progress made during the civil rights movement. Now, taking a look at the life of

affirmative action, how did how did affirmative action perform? In order to find this out, we will

dive into multiple sources, the first one being Alan Goldman's insightful essay titled affirmative

action, published in 1976.

Goldman provided his thoughts on affirmative action in 1976, where he had a reaction that was

very common. Goldman obviously saw affirmative action as a positive thought. However, he

questioned its ability.

He says in quote, if the goals are designed to simply end discrimination and provide equality of

opportunity, then the goals and timetables seem inconsistent in concept and even more so in

practice. Goldman tests the reality and performance of affirmative action, acknowledging that the

goals of affirmative action are yes, noble and justifiable, but he claims that in practice and in

reality there are inconsistencies in how it is applied and enforced, saying that the quotas and the

stats of affirmative action can create the thing it's made to take out discrimination. Now looking

at a source with a little bit different view is chapter one of the 2024 book Cultural processes of

innequality, as sociological perspective by Amanda Odis Kessler.

The chapter is calledmattering andequality as a differential evaluation. While Kessler f focuses

mainly on other topics like racial segregation and other recent federal decisions, she briefly

comments about affirmative action to pack a punch for her book. She almost aggressively saystowards the reader, by striking down affirmative action, they showed us how much they value

white over black and brown students.

This quote this quote helps set up her entire argument throughout the chapter. In fact, it backs up

her main claim, saying, the U. Supreme Court has been very busy lately, making clear which

kinds of people it truly values. Kessler's pushing the point of not just racial segregation, but also

the recent pushbacks and decisions made by the federal government and Supreme Court on the

previous civil rights and progressive rights accomplishments.

To help break down the complexities of affirmative action, I turned to a short but insightful video

from KQEDs above the noise series on YouTube, titled as affirmative action fair? included in

this audio source, the narrator explains that affirmative action is a policy designed to address

systematic equalities by giving underrepresentative groups better access to opportunities. This

highlights, of course, the program's intent.

It's not about giving unfair advantage, but about leveling the playing field and light of the

barriers, many colors, many students of color, still face to day. The video goes on to

acknowledge affirmative action cons, noting that critiques argued that it's unfair because it

prioritizes race over merit and can disadvantage other students who are equally or even more

qualified. Here, we are brought again to the question of whether pursuing equality for

marginalized groups accidentally creates new forms of exclusion.

Taking a step back will now look at the striking down of affirmative action, the Supreme Court

case. On June 29th of 2023, the United States Supreme Court decided to strike down race-based

affirmative action in college admissions. The Supreme Court's decision marks a major shift in

the US's education policy and civil rights law.The recent ruling came from two cases involving Harvard University and the University of North

Carolina, brought by a group called studentsents for fair admissions. The groups, I mean, the

court's conservative majority ruled that using race and admissions violates the equal protection

clause of the 14th amendment, and that things should be based only on merit and not on race.

Part of the majority, chief Justice John Roberts, wrote that such policies lacked sufficiently

focused and measurable objectives, and said students should be treated based on their individual

experiences rather than their race.

In heavy agreance with Roberts, Clarence Thomas, one of the black supreme court judges,

criticized and looked down on affirmative action, referring to it as "rudderless race based

preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes. On the opposite

side of this ruling, Justice Sonia, Sodomare, Justice Elena, Kagan, and canana Brown Jackson

were not happy. My favorite arguments among belonged to Justice Jackson.

She argued that the majority rulers had detached themselves from this country's actual past and

present experiences, meaning that although it's great to say that race should shouldn't have

anything to do with merit, it has in the past, and what affirmative action has been doing is

reversing and fixing the wrong that has come from the past. As we have explored in this episode,

affirmative action has long stood as a tool for addressing the deep rooting inequalities in America

society. from its foundations in the civil rights movement to its legal reinforcements through

executive orders and landmark legislation, affirmative action represented a proactive step

towards keeping equality, yet, as we saw through the critiques and the Supreme Court's 2023

decision, the policy has always faced scrutiny over its fairness, consistency, and impact. After all

of this review, I can agree. affirmative action is very important because it represents America

attempting to level the playing field and bring equality to the people of America.However, in practice, affirmative action was unable to produce the true results and solutions to

levering to leveling out opportunity in America, and I can confidently say that I don't know the

exact solution, but I can also confidently say affirmative action was sadly unable to fix this

problem in America.