Affirmative Action: A Need for Reform The goal of affirmative action was not (or at least should not have been) to promote diversity. The goal should have been to promote and ensure equality of opportunity for people regardless of race, color, creed, gender or national origin. The system that has evolved since the civil rights legislation of the 1960's is a misapplication of its original intent. Laws have been passed, quotas have been established and seemingly, everything has been done to prevent discrimination, but these new laws and quotas are only discriminating against a new group of people--the qualified white male. The affirmative action system originally may have had a just intent, but I sincerely believe it has been counterproductive in practice. Affirmative action by design was intended to help minorities and women reach the same levels of opportunity as the so-called majority, but in the process, reverse discrimination has taken place. Graglia believes "affirmative action" has become simply a deceptive label for racial preferences (31). This discrimination transgresses the basic American ideal that all people are equal before the law and must be treated as individuals. With the mass media rarely recognizing quotas much less portraying white males sympathetically, Peter Lynch, a sociological researcher, states "white males have been silently victimized one by one" (qtd. in Brimelow and Spencer). Now , in order to be employed, qualifications do not always matter as much as the color of a person's skin or his ethnicity. Race and gender-based preferences have no place in an affirmative action program. Race preferences were originally reserved for the approximately twelve-percent of Americans who are black (O'Sullivan 22). Today their beneficiaries of racial preference include Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, Alaskan natives and immigrants who belong to the "protected classes." ...
