Affirmative Action Under Attack by Initiative 200? Affirmative action is under heavy attack by initiative 200, and it should not be. It should not be under fire because it serves as an act of restitution for the discrimination and hurt that we have caused African-Americans and other minorities throughout this century. It is our job to repair and repay blacks because our performance in the past has immediately affected their present status. Americans, especially white males until late, were not opposed to affirmative action. This is only because affirmative action primarily benefited white males. It was the privileges our colonial fathers established on the basis of race and gender that allowed white males to dominate the job market with little or no contention. Some even believe that affirmative action is preferential treatment for white males. White males have used race consistently in two ways since the Civil War: for the purpose of inclusion and exclusion. They have used race inclusively to benefit themselves and exclusively to deny opportunity to others. In the past, white males were preferred. In the present, however, affirmative action, though still based on race and gender, is used to include those who in the past were excluded. In more precise terms, with today’s affirmative action, or preferential treatment, we are attempting to adjust for the imbalances of the past that have been carried on into the present. All of this seems so intuitively obvious, so why then can’t most Americans understand why affirmative action is obligatory? I believe the answer is as follows: Americans have refuse to recognize that there is and empirical relationship between the past and the present. They refuse to recognize that understanding the effects of past discrimination on the present is the key to explaining why affirmative action is not only needed in the present, but is the moral and political responsibility of so...
