Amanda Gallo



Persuasive Essay



Affirmative action is a policy which takes minorities of gender, race and religion and maximizes their benefits in order for there not to be any involuntary discrimination in the workplace, school or health programs. But because affirmative action separates the minorities into groups so that they can get their benefits, there is involuntary discrimination. In the majority of situations where affirmative action is used, it is unnecessary.


Affirmative action applies to a certain group of people, such as racial minorities, ethnic minorities, women, the physically disabled and underprivileged castes like India. You can witness affirmative action in many places, such as school. For example, at Harvard law school in the United States if they are accepting 300 students, 100 of those slots must be saved for African American students. So if there are 201 students who have gotten in, one must be turned away so that the quota can be filled. Now if all 100 of the African American students filling those slots had the grades to get in there would not be a problem, but there are cases where the schools in question will accept students whose grades aren’t as good as another students just to fill the quota. There are also many scholar-ships available exclusively for minorities, and again at times, they are given to students who don’t fully need them, there have been times where a scholarship has been given to a student even though they do not need the financial aid, solely because they are a minority.

College Acceptance Rates (2005)
Overall Acceptance Rate Black Acceptance Rate % Difference
Harvard University 10.0% 16.7% + 67.0%
MIT 15.9% 31.6% + 98.7%
Brown 16.6% 26.3% + 58.4%
Penn 21.2% 30.1% + 42.0%
Georgetown 22.0% 30.7% + 39.5%





In Canada affirmative action in the work place is called Employment Equity. Employment Equity is designated for four groups of people: women, visible minorities, people with disabilities and aboriginal people. Employment Equity tends to give preferential treatment to the people in this group, but it is only seen in industries that are federally regulated under the Canadian constitution, like banks and railroads and airlines, because Employment Equity is a federal legislation. The industries in question are not allowed to create jobs for the minorities but they must have minorities there meaning that if they don’t have any minorities in the work area, they would hire just about anyone to fill up their quota.
Another act in Canada would be the Pay Equity act, which forces companies to pay the women of the workplace the same amount as the men.


There are even health benefits given to minorities, though they are not going to the right people. Many minorities who need the financial aid to get Medicare or any other type of medical aid are not able to get it because there are minorities who can afford it all, but still seek out to receive benefits. The right way to solve this would be to give out Medicare or any other health service to those who need it the most, not just because they are African American or Chinese or because they are a woman.



On a final note, people are hiding behind affirmative action and anything else like it, thinking that this will be what stops discrimination, but in fact this is making it worse. If you keep grouping people together based on their religion, color or gender there will always be segregation. A proper solution to it all would be that financial aid and Medicare should e offered to all who need it, whether they are black or white. School should never be a place of discrimination so if there is a need to step in then the steps can be taken; spots shouldn’t have to be saved. Affirmative action is most often quite useless.