by Bonnie Meridieth

Created on: October 17, 2009   Last Updated: November 08, 2009

Affirmative Action was a vital and necessary part of our history. Without affirmative action, desegregation would have never worked. Discrimination of every other ethnicity and sex besides the white man would have continued in the workplace, even if we were successful in getting our schools desegregated. How any group of people can proclaim that they are more human, or of a higher power than anyone else is beyond me, but, that's our history.

The problem is, that we have outgrown affirmative action, and it has now become an insult to every race, man and woman who are affected by it. Who wants to know the only reason they got the position they were seeking is because of their race, sexual orientation, or because they are a woman? Where does affirmative action leave the white man? It has become a form of discrimination in it's own right.

Our anti-discrimination laws have made affirmative action obsolete. We already have a law that states that a person cannot be discriminated against for their race, creed, sex, etc., so what do we need affirmative action for? The only purpose it seems to serve is to discriminate against the white man.

As a woman, I have so many more opportunities available to me than my husband does. For that matter every one does. What's wrong with my husband, that he shouldn't qualify for help starting a small business, or get the job he wants, not because he's not the most qualified, but because, by law, the company he applies to has to have a predetermined amount of minorities? Who is the minority these days? It appears to me, that would be the one group of people who do not qualify for affirmative action. Hmmm...who would that be?

Our discrimination laws make it pretty clear about who cannot be discriminated against. Let's see if our country has come far enough to pull this whole "everybody is an equal" thing off on our own. I think we've advanced enough that our country won't regress back to the ridiculous ways we used to think. It's time we hire our employees based on their qualifications, and offer the same opportunities and benefits to everyone, making the playing field fair to everyone.

Another problem that affirmative action has caused is hostility in the work place. As stated above, who wants to be the "minority" who had to be hired? The whole company knows why they were hired. This promotes preconceived ideas that the person hired is not best for the job, regardless if they were or not, which means they have to work even harder to

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