Affirmative Action: Discrimination Against White People Affirmative action is bad and will not help solve the problems minorities face. The reason this is wrong is because it is discrimination. It has no place in today's society because it does more harm than good. On top of that, most people don't appreciate the presence of positive actions. Additionally, it appears that affirmative action may actually be detrimental to employee health. First of all, positive discrimination is discrimination, there is no way to hide it. When an employer hires someone because they are a minority, even if someone else is more qualified to do the job, it is discrimination. Just because it is reverse discrimination, where white people are discriminated against and minorities are discriminated against, does not make it correct. Affirmative action legalizes discrimination (Steele 1990, 39). “I thought discrimination was illegal in this country (Buchanan 1995, 1).” Additionally, if this discrimination persists, racism in the United States could worsen. Imagine how you would feel if you couldn't get a job just because you are a white, non-Hispanic male. Racism will get worse because of this, and that is precisely what we are trying to prevent. It is possible that due to affirmative action, racism will grow and continue to grow until history repeats itself and we end up living under Jim Crow laws again. It is an extreme possibility to end up under Jim Crow laws again, but it is entirely possible to end up in something close to Jim Crow laws again. In addition to this, people say that affirmative action is acceptable because it cures past discrimination (Keyes 1996, 1). Discrimination was not acceptable when black people were the ones getting the short end of the stick. It is therefore not acceptable for white people to be discriminated against (DeWit 1996: 1). Two wrongs don't make a right. Therefore, affirmative action does not make discrimination acceptable simply because it is directed against blacks rather than whites. Affirmative action in college is the most discriminatory measure this country has seen since Jim Crow laws many years ago (Buchanan 1995, 1). At Ivy League colleges, the average applicant GPA is near 4.0 and SATs are near 1300, minorities are admitted with GPAs below 3.0 and SATs below 1000 (D’Souza 1990, 231). The only way for universities to achieve ethnic proportionalism is to downplay or abandon merit standards and accept students from typically underrepresented groups, such as blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans, at the expense of better qualified students among whites and Asian Americans (D'Souza 1990, 231). Clearly, affirmative action allows undereducated citizens to enter college while qualified people are not accepted even though they should be. When we passed the Equal Opportunity Act, it didn't mean treating different races differently, it meant we had to treat all people as equal, affirmative action did not treat everyone as equal (Hacker 1990, 229). If we lower the standards of acceptance for minorities, we should lower the standards for everyone. Since no one would do that, we should increase To see the rest of this essay, you must be a member of Screwschool, click here.