Affirmative+Action

 ** AP Language and Composition Exam **  ** Section II **   ** Question 1 **

(Suggested time: reading time—15minutes; writing time—40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.)

** Directions: ** The following prompt is based on the accompanying eight sources.

The question requires you to integrate a variety of sources into a coherent, well-written essay. Refer to the sources to support your position; avoid mere paraphrase or summary. Your argument should be central; the sources should support this argument. Remember to attribute both direct and indirect citations.

**__ Introduction __**

The concept of Affirmative action is the practice, usually by institutions, of giving preference to racial minorities or women when hiring employees, giving awards, or deciding whom to admit. The term "affirmative action" was first used by President John F. Kennedy, in a 1961 executive order, and arose out of a desire to bring minority groups into institutions and professions that had traditionally been dominated by white males. It first appeared after the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s as an attempt to accompany the new legal equality gained for minorities with social and economic quality. The first kind of affirmative action involved setting racial quotas, deciding on a specific number or percentage of members of a given minority group that a company or institution had to accept. Originally intended to benefit blacks, affirmative action now provides protection to a broad array of other groups, including Asian Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and women. Affirmative action has caused race and sex to become a deciding factor in the college admissions process.

**__ Assignment __**

Read the following sources carefully. Then, in an essay that synthesizes at least three of the sources for support, take a position that defends or challenges the use of affirmative action in college admittance processes.

Source A (Savage) Source B (Current Events) Source C (CFAP) Source D (Cohen) Source E (Bell) Source F (Marklein) <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">Source G (Krenshaw) <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">Source H (Becker)

<span style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">** SOURCE A ** <span style="border-bottom-color: windowtext; border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 1pt; border-left-color: windowtext; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 1pt; border-right-color: windowtext; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 1pt; border-top-color: windowtext; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 1pt; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">Savage, Charlie. "Videos Reveal Sotomayor's Positions on Affirmative Action and Other Issues." New York Times 11 June 2009: A17(L). Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 5 Jan. 2011.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">It is obvious why affirmative action may hurt members of the majority group who are denied promotions or admission to various colleges, even though their records are better than many minorities accepted. But why is it bad for a country like the United States to do this, and often also for the minority groups gaining these privileges? My belief is that affirmative action is bad for any country that aspires to be a meritocracy, as the United States does, despite past slavery and discrimination that are terrible violations of this aspiration. The case for a meritocracy is that achievement based on merit produces the most dynamic, innovative, and flexible economy and social structure. Encouraging promotion or admission of less qualified applicants because of their race, gender, or other characteristics, clearly violates this principle, and produces a less progressive economy, and a distorted social structure.

<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px;">While opposing affirmative action, I do not advocate just letting the status quo operate without attempting to help groups that have suffered greatly in the past from discrimination. Employers, universities, and other organizations should make special efforts to find qualified members of minority groups, persons who might have been overlooked because of their poor family backgrounds or the bad schools they attended. By using this approach, one can spot some diamonds in the rough that would get overlooked. I know that the economics department at [the University of] Chicago in recent years has been able to discover and help train some excellent economists from disadvantaged backgrounds by searching harder for them.

<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px;">Another attractive policy is to help disadvantaged children at early ages rather than using affirmative action when they apply for jobs or colleges. There is still controversy over how much and how durable is the gain from head start programs, although I believe that extra effort spent on these children at very young ages tends to yield a decent return in terms of later achievements. But it has been conclusively shown that efforts to educate and help in other ways when children are in their teens generally fail since by that time the children have fallen too far behind others of their age to be able to catch up. Put more technically, current human capital investment builds on past investments, so if past investments are inadequate, the current investments have low returns.

** SOURCE B ** <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; display: block; margin-left: 0.1in; text-align: justify;"> "Not so black and white: a Mississippi middle school's attempt at affirmative action stirs controversy." Current Events, a Weekly Reader publication 20 Sept. 2010: 7+. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 5 Jan. 2011. <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; display: block; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"> ** A COLOR-BLIND SOCIETY ** <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; display: block; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"> <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; display: block; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"> In California, Michigan, Nebraska, and Washington state, voters have already passed amendments banning government agencies from using affirmative action policies. Now. the Utah Legislature is considering doing the same. The Utah proposal would prevent state agencies and universities from giving "preferential treatment" to people or groups based on race. color, sex, ethnicity, and national origin. "This is a national movement," Rep. Curtis Oda, the Utah lawmaker who introduced the proposal, told the Deseret News, "and it's taking off like wildfire." <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; display: block; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.4in;"> <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">Courts, meanwhile, are upholding such bans. California's Supreme Court recently ruled that Proposition 209, which barred the government from using affirmative action policies in that state, did not violate the federal Constitution.

<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">For many people, U.S. President Barack Obama is living proof that affirmative action is no longer needed. Ward Connerly, an African American businessperson and affirmative action opponent, saw the election as a sign that "America is a fair country and that color-blind vision works."

“Economic Snapshot for September 2009” Center for American Progress
 * SOURCE C **



<span style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">** SOURCE D ** <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px;">Cohen, Carl. "Race Preference in College Admissions | The Heritage Foundation." Lecture. The Heritage Foundation. 21 Apr. 1998. Conservative Policy Research and Analysis | The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation, 29 Apr. 1998. Web. 04 Jan. 2011. <http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/race-preference-in-college-admissions>.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">RACE PREFERENCE IS BAD
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">Beyond its unfairness, racial preference is injurious and counterproductive. Ask yourself: Who reaps the benefits and who bears the burdens of race preference? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">The beneficiaries of race preference are a few members of the preferred group (if, in fact, they succeed in graduating from the college to which they have been preferentially admitted), and the newly emerged corps of administrators whose <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> livelihood is derived from the oversight and enforcement of preferences. The vast majority of the members of the minority groups in question--in whose interests preferences had purportedly been designed--receive no benefits whatever. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.1in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">The burdens of preference, on the other hand, are borne by four large groups, for each of which the costs are greater by far than the alleged returns. 1. The cruelest burdens, the most damaging and the longest-lasting, are those borne by the members of the preferred minority group as a whole, who are inescapably undermined by racial preferences. When persons are appointed, admitted, or promoted because of their racial group, it is inevitable that the members of that group will, in the institution giving such preference, perform less well on average. Membership in the minority group most certainly does not imply inferiority; that is a canard--but that stereotype is reinforced by the preferences given. 2. Unfair burdens are imposed upon individuals--deserving applicants and employees--who do not win the places they would otherwise have won because of their pale skin. One often hears the claim that the burdens of preference can be readily borne because they are so widely shared by very many among the great white majority. That is false. Most among the white majority suffer no direct loss. Those who do suffer directly are a small subset, but a subset whose members are rarely identifiable by name. If a university gives admission preference to blacks, some whites who would have been admitted but for that racial favoritism will not be admitted. We cannot learn who those persons are, but the unfairness to unidentifiable individuals who lose because of their race is nevertheless very great. Moreover, every applicant with a pale skin not admitted or appointed may rightly wonder whether it were he from whom the penalty had been exacted. 3. Institutions that give preference pay a heavy price. Inferior performance (a consequence not of skin color but of stupid selection criteria) results in the many inefficiencies and the many hidden costs. In academic institutions, intellectual standards are lowered, explicitly or in secret; student performance is unavoidably lower, on average, than it would have been without the preferences, as is faculty productivity and satisfaction. The political need to profess equal treatment for all, while knowingly treating applicants and faculty members unequally because of their race, produces pervasive hypocrisy. Even great public institutions hide their policies, describe them deceptively, and sometimes even lie about them. This loss of integrity and public respect has been a fearful cost of race preference, from which recovery will require a generation.

Bell, Darrin. Cartoon. Cartoonist Group. 2007. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.
 * SOURCE E **



Marklein, Mary Beth. "SAT Scores Show Disparities by Race, Gender, Family Income - USATODAY.com." News, Travel, Weather, Entertainment, Sports, Technology, U.S. & World - USATODAY.com. Web. 06 Jan. 2011.
 * SOURCE F **

<span style="color: #535353; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 11pt;">1702: Average for students reporting family incomes of more than $200,000 a year <span style="color: #535353; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 11pt;">1623: Average for Asian students <span style="color: #535353; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 11pt;">1581: Average for white students <span style="color: #535353; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 11pt;">1506: Average for students reporting family incomes of $60,000-$80,000 a year <span style="color: #535353; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 11pt;">1448: Average for American Indian or Alaskan native students <span style="color: #535353; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 11pt;">1364: Average for Latino students ||
 * Sat: Crunching The Numbers ||
 * <span style="color: #535353; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 11pt;">1707: Average for AP, honors students
 * <span style="color: #535353; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 11pt;">1707: Average for AP, honors students

Krenshaw, Kimberle. "Affirmative Action Is Necessary and Is Not Special Treatment." Racism. Ed. Mary E. Williams. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Current Controversies. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 5 Jan. 2011.
 * SOURCE G **

The challenge for us in contemporary America is to capture this understanding across a range of modern institutions, where the presence of women and people of color remains a matter of controversy rather than a normal fact of life. As long as such situations remain, policies designed to ensure their presence are going to be criticized as special treatment and thus unfair. If efforts to defend affirmative action are going to be successful, advocates will have to redirect the public's attention to the conditions of everyday life for women and minorities that are themselves unfair, and to which affirmative action is a modest but a very necessary solution.

<span style="border-bottom-color: windowtext; border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 1pt; border-left-color: windowtext; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 1pt; border-right-color: windowtext; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 1pt; border-top-color: windowtext; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 1pt; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">Becker, Gary. "Affirmative Action Programs Do Not Promote Equal Opportunity."Social Justice. Ed. William Dudley. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 5 Jan. 2011.
 * SOURCE H **

<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px;">The clips include lengthy remarks about her experiences as an affirmative action baby whose lower test scores were overlooked by admissions committees at Princeton University and Yale Law School because, she said, she is Hispanic and had grown up in poor circumstances. <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px;">If we had gone through the traditional numbers route of those institutions, it would have been highly questionable if I would have been accepted, she said on a panel of three female judges from New York who were discussing women in the judiciary. The video is dated early 1990s in Senate records. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">Her comments came in the context of explaining why she thought it was critical that we promote diversity by appointing more women and members of minorities as judges, and they provoked objections among other panelists who pointed out that she had graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and been an editor on Yale's law journal. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">But Judge Sotomayor insisted that her test scores were sub-par -- though not so far off the mark that I wasn't able to succeed at those institutions. Her scores have not been made public. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">With my academic achievement in high school, I was accepted rather readily at Princeton and equally as fast at Yale, but my test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates, she said. ''And that's been shown by statistics, there are reasons for that. There are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action to try to balance out those effects.''