A634.4.4.RB
Is
Affirmative Action Ethical?
My
definition. Affirmative action is intentionally
providing consideration and favors to those not in the majority of a
society. According to LaFollette (2007,
pg. 87), “Affirmative action – the practice of giving special consideration to
minorities and women in hiring and school placement”. Very similar.
As a
society, America has gone through many transitions over the course of its
existence. Those that we refer to as “Pilgrims”
left Mother England because of religion in 1620. They fought for freedom from the crown for over
156 years. But their freedom did not
mean freedom for others. I say this
because a year earlier in 1619, subjects of the crown brought twenty African
slaves to Jamestown, VA to tend to the tobacco crop (History.com, n.d.).
So,
most believe that the slave trade began in the South. However, New England was a hot bed for
slavery twenty years before the Southern Colonies. According to Cliff Odle (2015), “In 1620, the
Pilgrims reached land in the new world and set up a colony. Plymouth, as they
called it, would be their new home where they could worship freely, separate
from the Church of England. Four years later, a gentleman by the name of Samuel
Maverick arrived with two African slaves. Their arrival marked the beginning of
a trade that would last more than two centuries, and challenge the meaning of
freedom even after the trade was abolished.
In
1643, the Puritan citizens of the Plymouth colony joined forces with the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, The New Haven colony and the Connecticut colony to
form the New England Confederation. One of the first articles in the
confederation established guidelines to legalize the slave trade, placing
Massachusetts among the first colonies to do so. It would be nearly twenty
years before the first southern colony did the same.”
With
that said, the principle that this country was built on freedom. On July 4, 1776, the original thirteen
colonies ratified our Declaration of Independence (from England) which states
(USHistory.org, 1776), “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.” Sadly, we did not view
slaves as people but property. They did
not have certain unalienable Rights and were not entitles to “Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness”.
America
has been a tempest in a tea cup since the signing of the Emancipation
Proclamation in 1863 and the Civil Rights Act signed 101 years later in
1964. Many people came to the
realization that slavery was wrong.
Guilt set in. The “sins” of our
fathers needed to be corrected.
According to LaFollette (2007, pgs. 87-88), “Everyone except diehard
racists now admit that systematic discrimination against blacks is wrong. It was wrong to deprive people of jobs,
housing, health, public benefits, and legal and civil rights merely because of
their race. Affirmative action, they
claim, is wrong for the same reason: these programs discriminate against whites
simply because of their race. Two wrongs do not make a right.”
I’m
going to have to agree. I believe that
there should be absolute equality regardless of race, gender, sexual preference
or religion. Tossing a group a “bone”
just because of these things or past treatment is just unethical. Someone is adversely affected, no matter how
you slice it. The playing field needs to
be leveled.
References
LaFollette, H. (2007). The practice of ethics.
Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing
History.com. (n.d.). SLAVERY IN AMERICA. Retrieved
from http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery
Odle, C. (2015). The Rise and Fall of the Slave Trade in
Massachusetts Part I. Retrieved
from https://www.thefreedomtrail.org/educational-resources/article-rise-and-fall-of-slave-trade-part1.shtml
USHistory.org. (1776, July 4).
The Declaration of Independence.
Retrieved from http://www.ushistory.org/DECLARATION/document/
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