Affirmative Action, What Is It

Affirmative action is an easy target that is injustice, and it creates barriers against all. According to the Fish, affirmative action was created to give “preferential treatment to disadvantaged minorities as part of a plan to achieve social equality” (2), in other words to right the wrong that society has done to minorities and allow them an equal opportunity at a life. In Scheer’s essay “Cries of ‘Reverse Racism’ Ring Hollow,” he states “The quest for diversity was not only morally satisfying but practical, encouraging a meritocracy designed to link all communities with an emerging middle class to create a more stable society and productive economy” (3). All society has done is to created reverse racism. Society cannot right the wrong they created in the past. By trying to right the wrong, America is discriminating against others and later we will have to try to fix that problem. Why would society want to create a larger problem in trying to help minorities? I agree strongly with Fish when he argues, “two wrongs don’t make a right; if it was wrong to treat blacks unfairly, it is wrong to give blacks preference and thereby treat whites unfairly” (2).
An entry in Wikipedia notes “affirmative action to remove discrimination is counterproductive, both because it requires the very discrimination it is seeking to eliminate in order to work and because it promotes prejudice by increasing resentment of those who are the beneficiaries of affirmative action from those who have been adversely affected by the policy” (2). Affirmative action holds people of the present accountable for crimes they did not commit; they were not part of the system that oppressed minorities. Why should they be discriminated against? Wikipedia also argues, “Since all people have equal rights, no individual’s rights should be sacrificed to compensate